A Circus of Errors
2024-03-07
When Nvidia reported high fourth quarter earnings for 2023 in February 2024, it sparked a general rally in stock markets. Stock markets in the United States, Japan, and Europe jumped to all-time highs after a few days of slight declines.
The American Economy: A House of Cards
2024-03-07
Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito
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Apartment Investment Syndication: A Predictably Unraveling Scheme, Thanks to the Fed
2023-12-11
The apartment investment industry has experienced severe malinvestment over the last several years, resulting in a massive bubble that has only recently begun to deflate with rising interest rates. A tidal wave of easy money—enabled by the Federal Reserve and four consecutive United States administrations, from George W. Bush to Joe Biden—drastically lowered the barriers to entry. As a result, even those with no investment acumen have raised and used other people’s money for complex, high-risk projects like buying, developing, and managing apartment buildings. Bridge loans, a natural outgrowth of enormous amounts of liquidity searching for yield in an environment with a zero-interest rate policy, have facilitated this process. The results should not be surprising, and to some they aren’t.
COP28: Scandal on Top of Fabrication
2023-12-09
Thousands of busybodies have descended on Abu Dhabi to forestall what they see as an imminent apocalypse. The twenty-eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP28) being held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), is presided over by its president, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and UAE Special Envoy for Climate Change. Al Jaber is also the chief executive officer of Adnoc, the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as well as the chairman of Masdar, otherwise known as the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, a state-owned renewable energy firm. The irony of an oil executive leading a meeting intended to eliminate fossil fuels from the world economy was not lost on
Silent Cal Had a Lot to Say
2023-12-08
(Originally published July 1, 2004.)
Historians have trivialized Calvin Coolidge as a do-nothing President naive enough to believe that "the business of America is business," and many have rated him as one of the worst of all time. However, he produced remarkable results without sacrificing our freedoms. And given that he was born on the 4th of July, there is no better time than our Independence Day to remember him. Under Coolidge, the top income tax rate of 65% under Wilson was eventually cut to 20%. The stock market began its unprecedented "roaring 20s" climb as it became clear through 1924 that Coolidge’s tax reduction bill would pass. In both his first and last year in office, federal receipts were $3.8 billion and expenditures were $3.1 billion, and in between, he cut the national