History vs Economics: Explaining the Causes of the Great Depression

2023-12-14

For the last few years, Jerome Powell has remained constant: the Fed was ready to do anything necessary until inflation returned to its 2% target. 
Today, Powell blinked.
While the Federal Reserve’s own optimistic projections place their preferred inflation measures staying above two percent until 2026, Powell used the December meeting to unravel the equivalent of a Mission Accomplished banner on the fight against inflation, potentially with the same results that awaited George W. Bush in Iraq. Rate hikes are over, rate cuts — plural — may be on the horizon in 2024.
According to the Fed’s dot plot, three potential cuts was the most popular opinion of FOMC members going into next year, with five other members expecting even more aggressive easing. While the Fed’s projections for their

2023-12-11

How big is the federal government? Two measures are the number of civilian employees (nearly two million) and the number of agencies (now exceeding 440). These numbers barely hint at their massive meddling into business activities and the personal lives of Americans.
While government was relatively small and less intrusive during its first hundred years, the Constitution held defects. In part, they resulted from the unavoidable compromises of consensus. The founders knew this, and some had anticipated civil war decades before the first shots were fired. Many other problems emerged during the great expansion of the nineteenth century due to the industrial revolution, the growth of America’s land area, and several political factors, mostly unanticipated. As population grew from about five