Will Consumer Confidence Return? (Video, BBC)
“With Joe Biden declared President Elect for the 2020 electoral race, the focus now shifts to markets and policy makers in their reaction to America’s next administration. I joined the BBC to discuss the latest developments.” ~ Edward Stringham
Election and Resurging Virus Drag Down Consumer Sentiment
“Consumer sentiment fell in early November following the election and a resurgence in Covid-19 infections. Combined with renewed restrictions, the outlook remains highly uncertain.” – Robert Hughes
Even a Military-Enforced Quarantine Can’t Stop the Virus, Study Reveals
“The lockdowners keep telling us to pay attention to the science. That’s what we are doing. When the results contradict their pro-compulsion narrative, they pretend that the studies do not exist and barrel ahead with their scary plans to disable all social functioning in the presence of a virus. Lockdowns are not science. They never have been. They are an experiment in social/political top-down management that is without precedent in cost to life and liberty.” ~ Jeffrey Tucker
The Orwellian Pandemic
“This strange power of language to change hearts and minds was always dubious at best but has, in our times of coronavirus need, gone completely berserk. If we tell a virus to back off, it will. If we ensure one another with empty religious phrases, we’ll all be protected from God’s wrath. George Orwell and his ‘Politics and the English Language’ has never felt more relevant.” ~ Joakim Book
State and Local Governments Should Not Get a Bailout – either from Congress or the Federal Reserve
“A Biden Administration likely will be able to give states and localities a bailout, even if Congress doesn’t approve a new ‘stimulus,’ and even if the Trump Administration doesn’t extend the Federal Reserve’s authority. But at least the incoming Biden people would have to jump through a few hoops.” ~ Daniel J. Mitchell
A Second National Lockdown is Dangerous and Reckless
“To say that now the entire country should enter a 4-6 week shutdown stricter than all that came before is not only tone deaf but reckless. Such a policy will likely have untold consequences that go beyond economic devastation. Suicides, substance abuse, and social turmoil have been exacerbated as a result of lockdowns, and they will only worsen under this new policy.” ~ Ethan Yang
Joe Biden, the New York Times, ‘Dark’ Winters, and ‘Terrifying Surges’
“The more a country tests, the more infections that country will unearth. Doctors and other experts can decide for themselves whether relentless testing is good, bad, or not terribly relevant, but it presumably explains a lot when it comes to virus spread in the U.S. More than politicians and sub-editors want to admit, their predictions and headers are really just statements of a not so dark or terrifying obvious.” ~ John Tamny
The Fed Has A Commitment Problem
“The whole point of a central bank is competently administering monetary policy. Right now, the Fed is failing at this basic task.” ~ Alexander W. Salter
Food and Gasoline Offset in the Everyday Price Index
“AIER’s Everyday Price Index fell 0.1 percent in October as food and energy price changes largely offset each other.” – Robert Hughes
Tyler Cowen Is Wrong About Great Barrington Declaration on Lockdown Policies
“Lockdowns are being re-imposed across Europe, and we’re in increasing danger of seeing them re-imposed in parts of the United States. Ironically, if policy makers heed the advice in the Great Barrington Declaration, which Tyler disagrees with, then the lockdowns would be behind us.” ~ Benjamin Powell
Who to Believe? What to Believe?
“The real world is complex and most of us do not have the information, or the information processing capabilities, to make sense out of much of it. So instead of jumping on intellectual bandwagons and opining that Y is the best color, or masks work because … they do!, or somebody on TV says so, try just watching, listening, thinking, and asking questions, especially about alternatives.” ~ Robert E. Wright
Elections and Legitimacy
“The election results will likely further erode federal legitimacy at a time when Uncle Sam has no trust to spare. How many more election debacles and brazen abuses of power does Washington believe the American people will tolerate?” ~ James Bovard
David Skarbek on Prison Order
“At best Skarbek has illustrated how governance institutions can be analyzed, providing us with a fascinating case study of prison life in a dozen settings. A bit more charitably, governance theory applied to prisons is not falsified by the examples he uses. Whether he has proven the usefulness of the theory, or its ability to explain the observed world, is much less clear.” ~ Joakim Book
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