The stock market has enjoyed a significant rally since the end of the first quarter. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported last week that the economy grew at a 3.5% annual rate in the third quarter--a figure they achieved by claiming inflation was running at only a 0.8% annual rate,...

It seems nobody in this country wants to take responsibility for the secular decline in the value of the U.S. dollar. When Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is asked about the currency's decline, he refers the query to the Treasury Department. When the president is asked about the dollar, he often...

It's time to ask ourselves a collective question: What have we learned from the economic chaos caused by a collapsing real estate market, which was itself caused by government intervention and easy credit? The answer is, unfortunately, an emphatic nothing!

Rather than let the market dictate the appropriate price level...

It's amazing but true. Even after all we've been through and all we have supposedly learned about the danger of being over leveraged and borrowing more than you can pay back, we are still piling on debt.

I know that's not what you hear in the media. Wall Street and...

It looks like this will be the third jobless recovery in a row. Coming out of the last two recessions we had what has become to be known as a jobless recovery. Job growth usually surges coming out of a recession as companies rush to bring on new employees to...

Just when you thought it was safe to hold dollars, even for just a little while, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke once again climbed aboard his helicopter and spread some more confetti (U.S. dollars) across the sky.

Apparently having the world's reserve currency drop 13% since March, even as measured against...

A Brief Review

Instead of allowing a cathartic and reconciling recession to run its course, the Fed decided last year to again bail out the economy by greatly expanding the money supply. In this latest case of artificial intervention, the expansion in the monetary base was a record-breaking trillion dollars,...

Get ready to be hit by some startling inflation data. The data soon to be released by the government will put a dagger through the hearts of those who are predicting a protracted period of deflation. Wall Street and Washington are telling you inflation isn't something we need to be...

While I was on a bull/bear debate last week on CNBC Reports with Dennis Kneale, the host referred to our country as Pax Americana. The name was given in reference to the Pax Romana (an era of peace and prosperity enjoyed by the Romans in the first and second century...

What should be clear to all Americans is that the need to grow the economy has never been more critical. But what constitutes real growth and the pathway to achieve it has never before been more confused.

The need for above trend growth in GDP was made even more pressing...

It astonishes me to see how quickly this country has embraced a socialist mentality and how readily it has accepted the belief that the source of our problems was an unfettered free market. Perhaps it is because those in power do not understand what the term free market truly means....

Last week on CNBC's The Kudlow Report, there was a thrilling debate over inflation between Alan Blinder and Arthur Laffer. Mr. Laffer (former member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board) encapsulated his position that we need to fear the return of inflation by simply stating that "...if you have a...

Most investors and pundits are celebrating the green shoots of economic stabilization and the belief that there will be a "V" shaped recovery in GDP growth. I believe, however, that what we are experiencing is just an artificially derived respite and that we have only entered the eye of our...

It is becoming painfully obvious that the Fed, Treasury, and Administration's disastrous recovery plan hinges on the devaluation of the U.S. dollar. Their specious strategy stems from the belief that a falling currency can re-ignite exports and spark a recovery in manufacturing while putting a floor in U.S. asset prices....

Last week the nation's number one trucking company, YRC Worldwide Inc., announced that it will seek $1 billion in TARP assistance to bailout the company's pension plan. Never mind the fact that the request is light years away from the original intention and approval given by congress to purchase toxic...

With the S&P 500 trading at 19 times all of 2009 earnings, investors have now priced in a recovery for the U.S. economy. And their perhaps premature celebratory mood continued today with the greeting investors gave the April Non-Farm Jobs Report.

The mantra from the perma-bulls is that the second...

It is disappointing to discover that the Harvard- and M.I.T.-educated Ben Bernanke did not learn while attending school that long-term interest rates must be set by the free market. Belatedly, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is about to learn this valuable and costly lesson because these rates cannot be...

In the longer term, the risk of the U.S. suffering through a bout with hyperinflation is very real. However, in the short term what we most likely face is a protracted period of stagflation first, because of our record debt and the Fed's decision to pay interest on excess bank...

President Obama is smooth. He has an incomparable ability to say the correct thing, then go and do the exact opposite. For instance, he says we in America cannot continue the boom-bust cycle of economic activity, and that we must repent for our past sins of building GDP growth by...

As he stated again clearly today, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve has deluded himself into thinking that when the time comes, he will be able to shrink the size of the Fed's balance sheet and reduce the monetary base with both ease and impunity. He also has deluded himself...