Affective Polarization Is Making Us Dumber

2023-09-16

The eurozone economic figures show the risk of stagflation, and the short-term impact is clear in Germany and France, but it extends to the rest of the countries.
Why has the eurozone lagged the United States and other developed economies in recent years? The enormous stimulus packages, including the 2009 Growth and Job Plan, the Juncker Plan, the New Green Deal, and the Europe Next Generation, are proving that central planning only delivers poor growth, elevated debt, and now high inflation.
The ECB’s latest figures show that monetary aggregates are starting to moderate, but inflation remains high and, in the latest print, is rising.
Consensus estimates of GDP growth in 2023 stand at 0.6% with inflation above 5%, according to Bloomberg, and it is important to remember that core inflation

2023-09-14

Hollywood has captivated our collective imagination for over a century. We tend to view it as something other than an industry subject to the same immutable laws of economics like cars, coffee, lumber and everything else. The current strike by Hollywood writers and actors in the face of multiple movies losing almost unheard-of amounts of money, cash bleeding streaming services and declining stock prices has been a wake-up call to an industry that narcissistically believed that it was immune to the business cycle. Surely, Hollywood has a classic malinvestment problem. 
Near the end of February 2009, the Fed Funds rate hit 0.2 percent during the height of the Great Financial Crisis. In the turmoil of the day, Disney stock hit a low of $16.77. This was down from the company’s all-time high of

2023-09-08

Pope Francis made headlines last week when he described the Russian Empire as "enlightened" and invoked the names of two expansionist Russian czars as examples of Russia’s "great culture." In impromptu remarks, Francis said to a group of Russian Catholics,  “You are the heirs of the great Russia: the great Russia of saints, of kings, the great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, of that great, enlightened Russian empire, of great culture and great humanity.”
Francis was quickly savaged among pro-Ukraine groups for these remarks, but for very superficial reasons. Essentially, Francis’s comments were evaluated almost totally in terms of how they related to the current Russian regime and the ongoing Russo-Ukraine war. Few specifics were mentioned about either Peter I or Catherine

2023-06-14

Onlookers often cannot fathom why Barbados and Jamaica have delivered such divergent outcomes despite their similar history as former colonies of England. Both countries achieved independence in the 1960s and inherited British law and institutions. Yet Barbados eclipsed her peers to become the pride of the developing world, whereas Jamaica recorded years of anemic growth and institutional degradation. However, digging deeper into history reveals that Barbados pursued different political economy paths from Jamaica.
Unlike Jamaica, Barbados was a settlers’ colony where planters were devoted to institution building rather than living off profits in England. Bajan planters thought that they represented the best of the West Indies. As gentlemen planters, elites aspired for Barbados to become a