Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
The Federal Reserve is an unelected board of bureaucratic experts that holds great sway over the US economy, the world economy, and the standard of living of the people of the United States. Because of the arcane nature of its work, its responsibilities are not something we would want under the sway of political operatives. […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
On April 17th, we attended the symposium put on by Dave Wanetick and “Davos In The Desert” in Ahwatukee. It was mostly a somber evening with a few flickers of hope. The subject was “lawfare”, a relatively new term to connote the use and abuse of the legal system to damage a political opponent or […]
Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
There seems to be no issue that stirs up people as the issue of abortion. It likely is because the thinking and narrative around the subject have been so distorted over the past 40 years or so. It would appear that the issue will be critical in multiple elections this cycle, including the state of […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
The Biden Administration is frustrated. After dumping fiscal stimulus that exceeds both the New Deal and the Great Society into the economy, he gets strikingly little political payback for such lavish handouts. The economy has been growing at a decent rate, unemployment appears rather low, and the stock market has been doing much better than […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
We don’t live in a free country anymore. Perhaps you hadn’t noticed. It’s easy to miss the vapor of totalitarianism seeping into America when most of our lives are dominated by 21st century bread and circuses, propaganda silos, and self-made virtual worlds, layered on top of centuries of American prosperity and stability made possible by the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Having spent 45 years in financial services, we recognize how difficult it is to estimate what markets will do. Yet, the human brain wants to have “some idea” of the potential of a given investment over time. After all, don’t we all want to own something that will be going up with significant potential and […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Democrats have long touted Social Security and Medicare as the crown jewels of both the New Deal and The Great Society. While both parties have voted for these programs, their design and implementation have, for better or worse, largely been a project of the Democrat Left in this country. If they can take the credit […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
Mark your calendar for April 17th for an important discussion of lawfare. Davos in the Desert and David Wanetick have an amazing event on April 17. It is called “Lawfare: The Woke’s War Against Lawyers Representing Republicans” and the venue will be in Ahwatukee, AZ. The two featured speakers will be John Eastman and Rachel […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Blood Money: Why The Powerful Turn A Blind Eye While China Kills Americans Author: Peter Schweizer, published by Harper Collins. Reading Peter Schweizer’s new book is a disturbing revelation. It is a very important book, perhaps the most important book for a Conservative American to read right now. However, it is not a pleasant book […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
New research from the Media Research Center has found that tech giant Google is decidedly biased in its reporting and has engaged in election interference for years. Election interference can occur directly or in this case indirectly, by denying or twisting information for voters thereby making it difficult to make an informed choice. This has […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
We all know about new highs in the Dow Jones Industrials, the NASDAQ, and the S&P 500. The market has been driven higher by a mere handful of very large tech companies. Some of the indices are already up 8% or so, just in the first two months of the year. The equally weighted S&P […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Those of us old enough, remember when California, especially southern California, was a hotbed of Conservativism. Those days are long gone and even thinking of a Republican Senator from what was once “the Golden State” seems about as likely a pack rat learning to play the fiddle. However, the candidacy of Steve Garvey in California […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
America First Legal, a law firm closely associated with the first Trump Administration, is suing Maricopa County for election malfeasance. American First is headed by Stephen Miller, former Senior Advisor to President Trump. Also serving on the board is Gene Hamilton, former Counselor General in the Department of Justice, Reed D. Rubinstein a former Deputy […]
Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute
The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute has developed a new series of educational videos called Foundations of Freedom. It seems many people absorb information today more readily on videos than reading. Whatever the method used, we think what the Goldwater Institute has done here is quite good and urge you to view their videos. Here is one […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
It is difficult to find exact historical settings for the inflation set loose by the Biden Administration. However, the similarity with previous periods could be a guide. Among the conditions plaguing us today are: very turbulent domestic politics, large deficits caused by an expansion of the welfare state and 20 years of losing warfare, supply […]
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
After the experience of Covid lockdowns, the manipulation of Federal Agencies and online platforms, the invasion of privacy, the suppression of free speech and assembly, and then the wild spending and debt burden undertaken to address problems caused by the government itself many Americans are left wondering if we could see a repeat of such […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Editor’s Note: When Stalin Came to Casa Grande – Part 1 was published in The Prickly Pear previously. We suggest reading both essay’s in sequence and together. As enlightening as the history of this New Deal, failed socialist experiment is for Americans, it is a revealing historic marker for the importance of free market capitalism, […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal created the largest agricultural collective in the US as an experiment to test socialist theories about both farming and human nature. Collectives have a long history in the US and elsewhere, and they all failed. In the Soviet model, this failure was admitted, and thus the collectivization required force, terror, and starvation to “convince” people to operate properly in the collective environment. But even with massive brutal force and the full weight of the state, in the end, they could not make the idea work. Most food production came from a small amount of privately owned plots that represented about 3% of the land under cultivation.
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
In a recent discussion we had with friends, the integrity of our election process was the topic. Some believe that fraud did not take place and that our elections are honest and fair. This increasingly is a minority view. Some believe that fraud is rare, but they will admit that the government and large corporations […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Starting with Obama and Trayvon Martin, and continuing through the George Floyd Riots and the summer of Black Lives Matter, it has become an article of faith among Democrats in particular, that the US suffers from what they call “systemic racism.” The concept is often asserted, but rarely with evidence or documentation. Ironically, much of […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
The stock market continued to move higher in January (about 3.5%), generally ignoring increased geopolitical risk in the Middle East and traditional signs of recession. Excitement about large amounts of cash on the sidelines, supposed easing financial conditions, expectations of imminent FED rate cuts, a “soft landing”, and all things AI pushed several key indices […]
Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
Recently The Prickly Pear ran an article by Oren Cass called Free Trade’s Origin Myth. Then we ran a rejoinder entitled On Comparative Advantage and International Capital Mobility by Donald Boudreaux, a staunch defender of free trade. As someone quite supportive of free markets, and free trade, we found reading both a bit disturbing. Furthermore, it […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Gold is the sole international banking asset that is not someone else’s liability. It is not a promise to pay from the US and it can’t be printed out of thin air. And you can hold it in your own vaults, outside of the weaponized international banking system. The world operated on a gold standard for centuries, so it is not unproven as are cryptocurrencies. It can’t get hacked or have accounts frozen. If you have it in possession, the holder controls the asset.
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Like most of the mainstream newspapers, the Wall Street Journal regularly runs stories about global warming. On January 10, 2024, they ran a piece, “Last Year’s Global Temperatures Set a Record.” We will ignore for the moment the questionable utility of “global temperature”, and that they have hit record highs, Rather, we wish to focus […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Picking through my scrambled eggs while reading The Wall Street Journal is not my best habit. But, there could be worse. I could be reading the New York Times. What caught my attention was an ad for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. It pictures a mommy and baby polar bear with the banner headline: […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
The question of debt and deficits has been vexing the US political system since chronic deficits began to be realized after the Great Society legislation of the 1960s. But while troublesome, the issue has moved apparently to irrelevancy. The term “existential threat” gets tossed around easily today while the real existential threat is right in […]
Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
It has been said, that if you could place all the economists in the world end to end, that would be a good idea. In that position, they might have been more useful than they were in 2023. While it has been a wild ride, in 2023, in the end, it has been a good […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Many American Jews, particularly Reform and Conservative Jews, are struggling with their adherence to Progressive ideas in the wake of the October 7th slaughter and rape of Israeli civilians. Orthodox Jews, seem to be having less difficulty. Why would that be? As others have noted, this may be because, for many Reform Jews, liberal social […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Last time we wrote on the markets we continued to advocate a cautiously bullish market stance. We have felt that the technical turn that the market had taken since October (a turn upward in the moving averages, breadth thrusts, and liquidity flows) coupled with the seasonal strength one typically sees this time of year, justified […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
This is the time of year when investors and individuals are thinking about tax planning. Many will be looking to take portfolio gains or losses to minimize taxation. Others will be looking for charitable deductions to achieve similar ends. Is there a way to combine personal economic needs, and charitable instincts in a way that […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
We like to call this the “peculiar math of corrections” because at first, it does not make sense. Suppose you buy a stock and it falls by 50%. If the stock comes back 50%, you will break even, right? No, if an investment falls 50%, it must come back 100%. Could that happen? Well, yes […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
The world is witnessing a major and unexpected political phenomenon. The press likes to call it the rise of “right-wing” or “populist” parties. From Argentina to Italy, to New Zealand to Holland, politicians who are not part of the mainstream of “establishment” political thought are rising to power. The term “right-wing” means one thing in […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
A few essays ago, we suggested that given the extreme financial leverage (overuse of debt) in both the governmental and private sectors, the risk of a deflationary period may be higher than many believe. You might remember the extreme events during the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. We are still living with the echo from […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Arizona has moved up in rankings determined by the Tax Foundation, but still can’t break into the Top 10. The Tax Foundation just came out with its 2024 State Business Tax Climate Index. The bad news is that Arizona does not make it into the Top 10. The good news is Arizona did move substantially […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
We have been told that we have had the hottest summer on record and the forests over the summer were all burning up. That is what the media tells us. There seems to be just a slight conflict with the facts. Technology continues to pull the stock market up, even as other shares dither. […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Our last market commentary noted that the stock market was very oversold, both in momentum and particularly in sentiment. As we moved to the end of October, we entered a period where “seasonal” strength is typical. The combination of “oversold” and seasonal strength prodded us to become more bullish on the market, at least for […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
It really is about being grateful, which is something too few of our spoiled citizens appreciate. But since the holiday is being weaponized by “woke culture”, there are some other elements of the story to think about. The short version, the way it is taught today, is that greedy Pilgrims landed in Plymouth Bay. Half […]
Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
Several news stories caught attention in the last few days. One was that Moody, the bond rating agency, joined Standard and Poor’s and Fitch, in downgrading the bond rating of US government debt. It would seem the issuer of the reserve currency of the world, and the world’s largest economy no longer has a AAA […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
As reported in the past few missives on the subject, stocks, and bonds have been having a generally tough time. We warned that this was going to happen, and we were lucky enough to get the call right. Weakness continued through the month of October and just might extend into the first weeks or so […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
Bari Weiss is a left-leaning writer who was once prominent at the New York Times. She left because of their growing anti-semitism. Since then, she has been writing interesting things on substack. After the Hamas brutal attack on Israeli civilians, she penned this epiphany: ”As a Democrat who has been left homeless, who is now […]
Estimated Reading Time: 35 minutes
Editors’ Note: Winston Churchill stated that if 100,000 American citizens had read Mein Kampf in the early to mid-1930s, the Second World War may have been avoided. The Hamas Covenant, a treatise of Jew hatred, a world-dominating caliphate by a radical Islamist movement exemplified by Hamas and the savage, pre-civilizational attack on Israel on October […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Editors’ Note: Election integrity arguments generally fall into two camps, which are not mutually exclusive. One camp makes the case that government agencies, working with broadcast and social media, put their thumbs on the scale to defeat Republicans and specifically, Donald Trump. We think that the case has now become quite solid, given the evidence […]
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
Imprecise use of language leads to imprecise thinking and subsequently, faulty measures. This seems to be particularly the case in our country right now on the issue of crime and guns. The Left has control of our language so we can have discussions only on their terms. Often, it is not helpful in understanding the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Unless one is familiar with portfolio theory, you may not be aware that for many discussions, and for many strategies, US Treasury Bonds are considered “risk-free”. Therefore their “risk-free” return is used as a lodestar to assist in comparing investment strategies. For example, in many decisions, investors must look at the trade-offs (what is the […]
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Readers might recall on August 3, and subsequent to that, we suggested that the stock market had gotten “overbought” and was vulnerable to the weakness that typically is found (called seasonality) in the late summer. Whether we are just lucky or smart, the market has cooperated by declining about 7% since our word of caution, […]
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Markets function within a complex framework of regulatory and central bank influence. This regulatory and monetary backdrop is not the benign rule of “experts” supposed by regulatory advocates in college textbooks, but rather often the product of raw entrenched political power. Success is getting in sync with the flow of money and political power. The […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, which represents independent doctors, has issued a new and important study. Based in Tucson, the most recent study came out on September 12th and concluded that masks not only did not work, but their required use by health bureaucrats was actually additionally harmful. Here is a partial rendering […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
A number of news sources have reported that it appears the CIA paid off, bribed, or monetarily induced, Covid researchers to change their opinions about the origins of Covid. Here is what the House Oversight Committee itself said on the matter: Staff on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Permanent Select Committee on […]
Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes
Editors’ Note: Now it appears that Dr. Fauci, the doctor most beloved by the press, is clearly a liar. He knew early on that the US government was funding gain of function research in China. Our own government, cooperating with our adversary, unleashed a terrible virus on the world, killing millions and wrecking the world […]
Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
The Biden Administration, after suffering a string of judicial defeats on gun control, is now attempting to expand the definition of who can have a Federal License to deal in firearms. After repeated judicial defeats on bump stocks, frames, receivers, and braces, the Administration has decided to throw great uncertainty over who must be licensed […]