Kevin Duffy on the willingness of the young to abandon time-tested institutions

Capitalism lifted man out of the Malthusian trap circa 1800 and created the hockey stick of human prosperity, yet many – especially the young – are ready to risk it all for a new form of economic organization based upon fuzzy concepts like “fairness” and “equality.”  (This is technically an old idea which has failed countless times, but we should never allow details to get in the way of progress!) 

While we’re at it, the family originated between 100,000 and two million years ago.  Time for a replacement, say the cultural Marxists.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Neomania Revisited," The Coffee Can Portfolio, April 26, 2021

Michael Shellenberger on the Texas blackouts

It was not the case that Texas’ energy sources failed equally. During the four days of blackouts, February 15th to 18th, the performance, as represented by capacity factors, of nuclear, natural gas, and wind turbines were 79%, 47%, and 14%, respectively. 

But because the electricity grid requires absolute moment-to-moment continuity in power supply in exact balance with demand, we should look at each power source’s lowest hourly performance during the four days of blackouts, which were 73%, 40%, and 2% of nuclear, natural gas, and wind turbines, respectively.

~ Michael Shellenberger, "Renewable Energy Boom Risks More Blackouts Without Adequate Investment In Grid Reliability," Forbes, April 20, 2021

Spike Cohen on taxing the rich

There is no such thing as a tax on the wealthy.  That burden always gets passed back to you, the middle class and most impoverished through rising costs of goods.

~ Spike Cohen, 2020 Libertarian Party VP candidate, tweet, April 28, 2021

Sheldon Richman on antitrust laws

The argument against antitrust law is that it misconstrues the market.  When free it is not a static condition but a process in perpetual motion, in which entrepreneurs are always trying to profit by better serving customers.  In an unmolested market the threat of potential competition would do as much to keep a single firm on the customers’ side as actual competition.  So quantitative indicators are misleading.  As D. T. Armentano says, high profits in an industry with one or two firms is not a barrier to new competition but an engraved invitation.  Moreover, even a cartel agreement among a few sellers couldn’t prevent “cheating” by parties to increase revenues; nor could it prevent new entrants from taking advantage of the dominant firms’ disregard of consumer welfare.

~ Sheldon Richman, "TGIF" Bust the Conservative 'Trust Busters'," The Libertarian Insitute, April 30, 2021

ZeroHedge on solar and wind power and future blackouts

Affordability and reliability are the two things good energy sources need to be.  Solar and wind—unlike hydropower, which is also a renewable source—can only be one of these two things, and that's if there is no storage included.  They can be affordable, as we are often reminded.  Yet, sadly, they cannot be reliable.

This means that the more billions are poured into boosting renewable capacity, the greater the risk of further blackouts.  Perhaps at some point, if wind and solar become the main sources of electricity, authorities will need to institute planned outages.

~ ZeroHedge.com, "The Ugly Truth About Renewable Power," April 30, 2021

Carl Sagan on the Big Lie

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.  We're no longer interested in finding out the truth.  The bamboozle has captured us.  It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken.  Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. 

~ Carl Sagan

Jack Denton: individual investors buying, insiders selling

Individual investors have been throwing money at the market while insiders are getting out.  An unprecedented $105 billion flowed into U.S. equity exchange-traded funds in the last eight weeks, Vincent Deluard at broker StoneX says.  Meanwhile, the strategist says equity offerings raised a record $262 billion in the first quarter and Nasdaq insiders sold $41.5 billion in the past three quarters.

~ Jack Denton, "Insiders selling shares and four more bad signs for the bull market, according to this strategist," MarketWatch.com, April 29, 2021

Kevin Duffy on investing, risk and volatility

For investors, risk is exposure to permanent loss, not volatility.  In fact, we should welcome volatility as it creates opportunity.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Portfolio Insurance: Buying umbrellas in summer," The Coffee Can Portfolio, April 26, 2021

Pablo Picasso on work ethic

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. 

~ Pablo Picasso

Doug Casey on George W. Bush's war on terror

It’s a pity that Bush, when he was in office, made such a big deal of evil.  He discredited the concept.  He made Boobus americanus think it only existed in a distant axis, in places like North Korea, Iraq and Iran, which were and still are irrelevant backwaters and arbitrarily chosen enemies.  Bush trivialized the concept of evil and made it seem banal because he was such a fool.  All the while, real evil, very immediate and powerful, was growing right around him, and he lacked the awareness to see he was fertilizing it by turning the U.S. into a national security state after 9/11.

~ Doug Casey, "The Ascendance of Sociopaths in U.S. Governance," International Man, April 28, 2021

Morningstar: large cap value funds take in record flows in March

As a category group, U.S. equity funds gathered the most assets in March.  They took in $54 billion, dwarfing the previous monthly record of $38 billion set in February 2021.  Their month-over-month organic growth rate of 0.49% was the highest since October 2013's 0.53%.  Resurgence in investor appetite for cheap stocks drove the inflows.  Investors poured into value-oriented and cyclical funds at some of the sharpest rates in history.  Large-value strategies collected a whopping $20 billion, by far the largest sum ever.  Their 1.47% organic growth rate in March was the highest since the 1.68% mark set in January 2004.  Small-value strategies achieved a similar feat, picking up $5.4 billion, more than double January 2017's previous record of $2.2 billion.  The 2.77% organic growth rate was the highest since April 2002, a period when investors were reeling from the dot-com bubble crash. 

Despite investors' push into value-equity strategies, the influx of cash hasn't exactly been a windfall for active managers.  Actively managed large-value funds took in just $2.2 billion of the category's $20 billion in total inflows in March, breaking their streak of 78 consecutive months of outflows totaling $318 billion.  Prominent passive funds such as iShares Russell 1000 Value ETF (IWD) and Vanguard Value Index (VVIAX) collected as much or more in March than all active managers just by themselves, pulling in $2.2 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively.  Investors gave active small-value managers more credit than their active large-value counterparts, handing them $1.4 billion of the category's $5.4 billion total inflows.

~ Morningstar Research, March 2021

Kevin Duffy on how the 2000 tech bubble led to internet 2.0

The dot-com bubble of 2000 was never the internet itself, but the notion of “first mover advantage.” There was a gold rush mentality to stake claims, and it was the internet pioneers who largely took the arrows in the back. If anything, the optimists underestimated the transformative nature of the new technology. The early 2000s shakeout cleared the way for a powerful second wave that drove the economy and made vast fortunes for the settlers. 

In March 2000, when the NASDAQ Composite peaked at just above 5,000, Amazon.com hadn’t recorded its first $1 billion in sales, Google was in diapers generating $19 million in revenue, and Mark Zuckerberg had yet to reach his 16th birthday. Today the founders of Amazon, Google and Facebook are worth a combined $440 billion and their companies valued at $4.22 trillion, not quite 10% of the total U.S. stock market capitalization.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Bubble Lessons," The Coffee Can Portfolio, April 26, 2021

Kevin Duffy compares the Reagan and Biden economic plans

When it comes to government intervention, there is not much new under the sun.  The state’s objective is always to extract as many eggs from the golden goose as possible.  While Reagan’s economic team acknowledged the importance of keeping the goose alive, Biden & Co. operate under no such constraints.  Count on the current administration to enact new taxes on capital gains, dividends and corporations...  The rich will be made a target, assuming they stick around for the abuse.  In an increasingly virtual economy with an expanding remote workplace, the wealthy have options.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The American Rescue Plan," The Coffee Can Portfolio, April 26, 2021

Peter Lynch on investing and doing your homework

If you don't study companies, you have the same success with stocks as you do in a poker game if you don't look at your cards.

~ Peter Lynch

Rob Weir on Karl Marx's theory of exploitation

Q: What do Libertarians and economists on Quora think of the Surplus Value exploitation brought up my Marxists? 

A: From an economic perspective it is incoherent nonsense.  But it lingers on for its rhetorical value. 

Remember, it was never the case that Marx sweated over his economic thinking, writing two thick books and nearly finishing a third, before he arrived at the conclusion that capitalism was bad and socialism was the way forward. 

It was nothing like this.  Marx came to his conclusion relatively early in his life, based on his philosophical leanings, stuff he cobbled together from Hegel and others.  He went to economics in an attempt to make a “scientific” argument for what he already thought to be true. 

That economic argument was a total mess, and no serious economist takes it seriously today.  It is only good for slogans now.  However, the underlying philosophical insights that led Marx along this path, views on things like alienation, exploitation, class, dialectic, historical materialism, etc., all these non-economic ideas, have been quite durable and pervade the humanities and the social sciences, to this day.

~ Rob Weir, Quora, January 4, 2021

Tom Bernhardt on police services

I hope that conservatives wake up to the reality of police.  Police are the violence/enforcement arm of the state and its dictates. 

The right has reflexively supported this arm of government because they focus on its theoretical mission of protecting people from criminals.  But this isn’t what they do most of the time.  Police mostly enforce petty laws and exert control.  You can count on most of them to go full totalitarian if their political management decrees so.  There will be little resistance among their ranks. 

As to the relative role and value of police, answer the following question: when you suddenly see a policeman, is your first reaction most often anxiety/alarm or appreciation/happiness?  When roving bands of thugs and looters burned cities and accosted people, police mostly stood down.  But they were there to arrest those that dared defend themselves and their neighbors. 

The left’s complaint about policing is a mostly-contrived claim of racism.  They don’t touch the fundamental issue because at the end of the day, they need the police and their guns to implement their edicts and control.  Ditto for the military and intelligence agencies.  Hoping for reform is naïve.

~ Tom Bernhardt, Facebook post, April 25, 2021

Cops harrassing teenagers on bikes
without a license in Perth Amboy, NJ

Ed Bugos on Ludwig von Mises

Why is Ludwig von Mises my favorite author of philosophy and economic theory? Here are some of my reasons. 

He refined and formalized the subjective theory of value, which exploded the classical economic school when applied to the "paradox of thrift" alongside Menger's marginal theory that stumped Keynesians and the classical economists. 

He completed the theory of money, and integrated it into macroeconomics and business cycle theory, which essentially revived the Austrian School again after Keynes and WWI. 

He conceived of an epistemological foundation for the sciences of human action called "praxeology" to replace "sociology" - economic theory would only be one branch of this science. 

By challenging the socialists with the economic calculation problem under a socialist commonwealth in his book Socialism he destroyed the theory of socialism absolutely.  Only the most devout socialists will reject the problem, and never coherently. 

He labored for freedom, justice and sound money; fought totalitarianism in Europe when it was under the thumbs of Stalin and Hitler.  Eventually they chased him out of Europe and into the hands of the American socialists in academia who marginalized him by never letting him have a real position as a professor. 

He never compromised on his ideas and principles and always believed and promoted that we should never give in to evil.  As a result, he was a consistent advocate of the sound money principle and powerful critic of big government, central banking, regulatory bodies, and bureaucracy.

~ Edmund Bugos, Facebook post, April 18, 2021

Kevin Duffy on Krugmanomics and real economics

Krugmanomics: never trust the people (the free market), always trust the government. There is no problem that can't be solved by government spending, borrowing, taxing and printing. Whenever this leads to a crisis - which it inevitably does - blame it on the free market and respond with more government. Rinse and repeat... until the government runs everything and you've turned your economy into the former Soviet Union or Venezuela. 

If you want real economics, turn off this charlatan and read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.

~ Kevin Duffy, April 25, 2021

(For a free copy of Hazlitt's 1946 classic, click here.)

Barron's: "SPAC IPOs fall out of favor after hot streak"

If April could be distilled in a sound, it would be that of brakes screeching on market enthusiasm for special purpose acquisition companies. 

There have been only six new SPAC initial public offerings so far in the second quarter, according to Goldman Sachs data.  That’s a rounding error compared with the 55 SPAC IPOs in the first few weeks of the first quarter, which ended with 277 new SPACs raising combined proceeds of $91 billion.

~ Carleton English, "SPAC IPOs Fall Out of Favor After Hot Streak," Barron's, April 24, 2021

Steven Sears: 15% of all current U.S. stock investors first began trading in 2020

In Schwab's recent earnings release, CEO Walt Bettinger noted that client activity exceeded anything the company had experienced.  On some days, the brokerage firm handled as many as 10 million trades and 15 million logins across its website and mobile platforms.

The market volatility even attracted more investors - rather than scaring them away.  A Schwab survey found that 15% of all current U.S. stock investors first began trading in 2020.  The firm calls these people Gen I, or Generation Investor, which is catchier than, and not as menacing as, calling them Generation Volatility.

~ Steven M. Sears, "Charles Schwab Is Tailor-Made for Volatile Times," Barron's, April 24, 2021

Gad Saad on racism and progressivism

Most people are not rabid racists, haters, and miscreants.  Today's racists espouse critical race theory cloaked in the robe of "progressivism."  Don't buy into it.  Treat people as individuals.

~ Gad Saad, tweet, April 24, 2021

Adam Smith on spendthrift governments

Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.  The whole, or almost the whole public revenue, is in most countries employed in maintaining unproductive hands.

~ Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, p. 325

Thomas Sowell on debate

It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.

~ Thomas Sowell

Andrew Ross Sorkin on the SPAC boom

In Wall Street’s usually brash way, a new saying is making the rounds. It isn’t in good taste, but it speaks to a phenomenon that is transforming finance and corporate America. 

“I know more people who have a SPAC than have Covid,” several financiers have told me recently. (If you’re wincing, you’re not alone. I am, too.) 

SPAC stands for special purpose acquisition company, the biggest thing in financial markets of the moment. Hundreds of these publicly traded shell companies are being created by everyone from KKR, the leveraged-buyout firm, to Alex Rodriguez, the baseball player turned entrepreneur. Just on Tuesday, the football player Colin Kaepernick filed for his own $250 million SPAC. 

These vehicles have only one purpose: to find a private company and buy it, usually within two years. SPACs are sometimes known as "blank check" companies — as in, investors give them a blank check to go buy a business, sight unseen.

~ Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Wall Street’s New Favorite Deal Trend Has Issues," The New York Times, February 10, 2021

Former baseball star Alex Rodriguez announced
this month that his investment firm was aiming
 to raise $500 million for a blank-check fund.
Credit...

Diego Parrilla on limiting exposure to inflation risk

We have a problem with cash, we have a problem with fixed income, and we have a problem with credit, because they are effectively short inflation.

~ Diego Parrilla, "Diego Parrilla On Appreciating the Opportunity Set in 'Antibubbles'," Superinvestors and the Art of Worldly Wisdom, 44:10 mark, April 21, 2021

Jesse Felder on what "don't fight the Fed" really means

There's a fascinating irony right now....  The misconception propping up asset prices is this idea of "don't fight the Fed," that there is no alternative to owning stocks when interest rates are suppressed.  So "don't fight the Fed" means you buy financial assets.  At the same time, the Fed is saying "we're going to do everything in our power to create inflation."  So if you're going to really adopt the "don't fight the Fed" mantra, then you would take them at their word and say "they're biasing for higher inflation," which means financial assets are not the place to be.  It's interesting to me that these misconceptions result in this hyprocrisy. 

~ Jesse Felder, "Diego Parilla on Appreciating the Opportunity Set in 'Antibubbles'," Superinvestors and the Art of Worldly Wisdom podcast, 37:15 mark, April 21, 2021

Irma Kurtz on giving

Givers have to set limits because takers rarely do.

~ Irma Kurtz, British advice columnist

Donald Boudreaux on the minimum wage

If the case of raising the minimum wage even might destroy jobs for some of the workers that it's meant to help, what right have we to embark upon this policy?  I think none.   Remember, the people whose livelihoods are here being experimented with are low skilled workers.  They aren't doctors, lawyers, machinests, welders or college professors.  They're motel maids, fast food workers, teens just entering the workforce.   If minimum wage proponents are correct that no jobs are destroyed, then these workers are indeed benefitted without cost to them.  Although here there's a question of who pays the costs of these workers' gains and what is the moral reason for imposing that cost on those persons.  For example, if we all agree that all low skilled workers should be given raises, what's the moral justification for requiring only current employers of low skilled workers to pay these costs?  Why not pay these raises out of general revenues collected in taxes from the taxpaying population?  It's a question that I think should be asked, but it is seldom asked. 

But what if basic economics and the bulk of empirical studies are correct and minimum wage proponents are incorrect?  We then have a policy that not only prices some willing workers out of jobs - and again, also out of opportunities to get job experience, which helps these people to get even higher wages in the future - but a policy that also distributes its benefits to those who need those benefits the least, while it inflicts the bulk of its costs on those who can least afford such burdens.

~ Donald Boudreaux, "Against a $15 Minimum Wage," 10:05 mark, USD Center for Ethics, Economics and Public Policy, September 16, 2016

Abigail Van Buren on parenting

If you want your children to turn out well, invest twice as much time with them and half as much money.

~ Abigail Van Buren, writer of the Dear Abbey column from 1956 to 2002

Camille Paglia on modern feminism

Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.

~ Camille Paglia

Gad Saad on free speech

There is no greater goal than to defend the rights of those with whom you disagree.  That's the definition of a truly moral, virtuous person.

~ Gad Saad, "My Thoughts on the Derek Chauvin Verdict," YouTube, 13:30 mark, April 20, 2021

Gad Saad on the Derek Chauvin verdict

Here you have one year of violent rioting susequent to the horrifying and tragic killing of George Floyd and you have countless mobs saying, "if the correct verdict is not reached, cities will burn." So do you think, on a scale of zero to 100, where 100 they were maximally intimidated, zero they weren't at all, what's the number that you're going to ascribe to how afraid those poor jury members were when they were deliberating? Certainly no intellectually honest decent human being would say it's at zero. We can debate if it's at 100 or 95 or 90 or 80, but is this the type of society you want to live in?

~ Gad Saad, "My Thoughts on the Derek Chauvin Verdict," YouTube, 6:55 mark

Noah Pollak on systemic racism

"Systemic racism" is such a perfect Marxist formulation.  It delegitimizes an entire society without blaming anyone in particular, so it generates little opposition.  It signifies everything and nothing simultaneously.  It can't be proven or disproven.  It's genius propaganda.

~ Noah Pollak, tweet, April 21, 2021

(Pollak tweeted reacting to President Biden's comments following the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict in the George Floyd murder trial.)

Matthew McLennan on speculative excess

Q: Are there signs that investors aren’t taking these risks seriously? 

A: There are periods where the market pays a premium for growth, and then there are market environments where it’s not even about growth—it’s about optionality and acceleration.  You see that in multiple dimensions now: Witness the dramatic rise of Bitcoin or the eye-popping valuations of some of the larger companies in technology or alternative energy.  Or the whole creation of the SPAC [special purpose acquisition companies] market where, again, people are paying for optionality—they’re paying for the potential to own a business.  They don’t even know what it is yet.  Things like that make one a little wary. 

I’ve also received calls from friends of my children and older people—all wondering how they can make money quickly in some of these emergent fields.  I haven’t received such a frequency of calls since the late 1990s.  It feels like one of those moments where it’s worth reminding people that the whole point of investing is to preserve purchasing power.  If you’re prudent, you hopefully grow your purchasing power in a way that’s resilient.

~ Matthew McLennan, portfolio manager, First Eagle Investment Management, "A Time for Worry - and For Yogurt," Barron's, April 17, 2021

Randall Forsyth on fund flows going into cryptocurrencies

One would have thought that the Fed’s rapid monetary expansion [$4.2 trillion increase in M2 money supply over the past year] to help spur the economy’s recovery would have lifted gold.  But the main beneficiaries have been cryptocurrencies.  According to a J.P. Morgan report, $20 billion flowed out of gold exchange-traded funds in the most recent two quarters, while $7 billion went into Bitcoin funds. 

~  Randall Forsyth, editor of the Up & Down Wall Street column, Barron’s, April 10, 2021

Eric Savitz on the future of Amazon.com

At the core, Amazon is a rare company operating three huge and distinctive businesses [e-commerce, AWS, digital advertising], each relatively early in their development.  If ever there was a stock to buy and hold forever, this is it.

~ Eric Savitz, "A $3 Trillion Future Is Seen for Amazon Despite Challenges," Barron's, April 17, 2021

Matthew McLennan on owning gold

We own gold as a hedge against the unknowable. It's almost a recognition of one's own humility in the face of that uncertainty.

~ Matthew McLennan, portfolio manager, First Eagle Investment Management, "A Time for Worry - and For Yogurt," Barron's, April 17, 2021

Warren Buffett on managing risk

Never test the depth of the river with both feet.

~ Warren Buffett

Thomas Jefferson on rebellion

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)
1938

Warren Buffett on investing

Beware the shareholder activity that produces applause. The great moves are usually greeted by yawns.

~ Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway 2008 Letter to Shareholders

(Quote of the Week on Stansberry Investor Hour with Dan Ferris, April 15, 2021.)

Jeff Bezos on success

If you want to be successful in business (in life, actually), you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with.  Any business that doesn’t create value for those it touches, even if it appears successful on the surface, isn’t long for this world.  It’s on the way out.

~ Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com 2020 Letter to Shareholders, April 15, 2021

Univ. of Michigan survey: consumer confidence at 13-month high

Stimulus checks, rising coronavirus vaccinations and a rapidly growing economy lifted the spirits of Americans in early April and pushed a closely followed survey of consumer attitudes to a 13-month high. 

The consumer sentiment index rose to 86.5 in April from 84.9 in the prior month, according to a preliminary survey by the University of Michigan. 

That’s the highest level since the pandemic erupted in the U.S. in March 2020. The index had touched a 16-year high of 101 just a month earlier. 

~ Jeffry Bartash, "Americans are feeling the best they’ve felt since the pandemic began, consumer survey shows," MarketWatch.com, April 16, 2021

Jonathan Alter: Biden is first president since LBJ "who can rightly be called FDR’s heir"

For America to “own the future,” as the president promised last month, he needs to do amid the pandemic what Mr. Roosevelt did amid the Depression: restore faith that the long-distrusted federal government can deliver rapid, tangible achievements.

[...]

Just as Mr. Roosevelt understood that the laissez-faire philosophy of the 1920s wasn’t working anymore to build the nation, Mr. Biden sees that Reagan-era market capitalism cannot alone rebuild it. 

[...]

Whatever the future holds, Mr. Biden and Mr. Roosevelt are now fused in history by the size and breadth of their progressive ambitions.  Jimmy Carter took office when liberalism was fatigued; Bill Clinton said “the era of Big Government is over”; Barack Obama was forced to conform to the mantra of deficit hawks. Mr. Biden was lucky enough to have been elected when what the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called “the cycles of American history” are spinning left.  He is the first president since Lyndon Johnson who can rightly be called F.D.R.’s heir.  Soon we’ll know if he squanders that legacy — or builds on it.

~ Jonathan Alter, "How F.D.R.'s Heir is Changing the Country," The New York Times, April 12, 2021

Cathie Wood on recent correction: "Nothing has changed for us"

We were hit with a bout of volatility...  Nothing has changed for us...  If we use our 5-year price targets, instead of expecting a 15% compounded annual rate of return - no promises here, compliance will be happy that I say that - instead of 15%, which is where we were at the peak in February, we now believe that our portfolios will deliver closer to 25% compound annual rate of return.  Again, no promises, but all  I'm saying is the bout of volatility did not change our price targets.  They gave us a great opportunity to concentrate towards our highest conviction names.

~ Cathie Wood, Bloomberg interview, 1:30 mark, April 14, 2021

Tom DiLorenzo on the reason for government

The purpose of government is for those who run it to plunder those who do not.

~ Tom DiLorenzo

Tom DiLorenzo on the American response to the public health bureaucracy

Once the “public health” bureaucracy declared a pandemic, millions of Americans instantly turned into mental infants, eager for the D.C. bureaucracy to become their real mommies and daddies and protect them from the big bad coronavirus wolf.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "Why 'Public Health' is the Health of the State," LewRockwell.com, April 14, 2021

Fraser Myers on the race industry

Many of the ideas about race being pushed by BLM – particularly the ubiquity of structural racism – are now part and parcel of corporate culture and the white-collar workplace.  Race experts are invited to give workshops and training on diversity and inclusion.  Employees are tested for their unconscious bias. An entire race industry worth billions has mushroomed.  The most famous and sought-after race entrepreneurs, like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X Kendi, can earn vast sums of money in the corporate sector – sometimes tens of thousands of dollars per hour.  Those BLM protesters setting fire to police stations were not radical revolutionaries — they were more like the militant wing of the human-resources department.

~ Fraser Myers, "Why big business loves Black Lives Matter," spiked, April 13, 2021

Jensen Huang on the significance of NVIDIA

Q4 was another record quarter, capping a breakout year for NVIDIA’s computing platforms.  Our pioneering work in accelerated computing has led to gaming becoming the world’s most popular entertainment, to supercomputing being democratized for all researchers, and to AI emerging as the most important force in technology.

~ Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, February 24, 2021

Denis Rancourt on mask wearing

By making mask-wearing recommendations and policies for the general public, or by expressly condoning the practice, governments have both ignored the scientific evidence and done the opposite of following the precautionary principle. 

In an absence of knowledge, governments should not make policies that have a hypothetical potential to cause harm. The government has an onus barrier before it instigates a broad social-engineering intervention, or allows corporations to exploit fear-based sentiments. 

Furthermore, individuals should know that there is no known benefit arising from wearing a mask in a viral respiratory illness epidemic, and that scientific studies have shown that any benefit must be residually small, compared to other and determinative factors.

~ Denis Rancourt, PhD, "Masks don’t work – a review of science relevant to Covid-19 social policy," The Wall Will Fall, June 23, 2020

Jamie Dimon on the Goldilocks economy

It is possible that we will have a Goldilocks moment - fast and sustained growth, inflation that moves up gently (but not too much), and interest rates that rise (but not too much).

~ Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO, 2020 annual letter