Expect More Currency Destruction and Weak Economies in 2024
2024-01-13
Markets closed 2023 with the strongest rally for equities, bonds, gold, and cryptocurrencies in years. The level of complacency was obvious, registering an “extreme greed” level in the Greed and Fear Index.
2023 was also an unbelievably bad year for commodities, particularly oil and natural gas, something that very few would have predicted in the middle of two wars with relevant geopolitical impact and significant OPEC+ supply cuts. It was also a poor year for Chinese equities, despite slower-than-expected but strong economic growth and robust earnings in the large components of the Hang Seng index.
Markets rallied due to a combination of optimistic expectations for inflation and aggressive rate cuts from central banks. The question now is, what can we expect in 2024?
The year of
Immigration and Geopolitics: Should Latvia Have an Open Border with Russia?
2024-01-10
In the debate over immigration among laissez-faire liberals and libertarians, one aspect of the open-borders side becomes quickly apparent: the debate generally ignores problems related to geopolitics such as international conflict, ethnic strife, and expansionist states. Rather, the libertarian advocates of open borders tend to focus overwhelmingly on why rich countries should open their borders to migrants from lower-income countries. These open-border arguments generally stick to listing the practical benefits of immigration in terms of economic factors like productivity and per capita GDP. It is assumed that open borders will necessarily lead to a rising standard of living for the residents of the host country. Yet, we rarely see these open-border arguments convincingly applied to