CRC is pleased to announce that the July 2025 special issue of Capital Research is now available online. Here’s a peek at what’s inside: Kali Fontanilla: Funding the frivolous: The top ten most ridiculous nonprofits Ken Braun: America’s top ten anti-energy NGOs Parker Thayer: The DOGE Files: Top ten ways to waste tax dollars Michael…
Category: Economy
Did RFK just take away your cancer treatment?
Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons It starts with a little bump on your neck. You notice it when your hand brushes against it while you’re washing your hair, but at first you don’t pay it much attention. Then your spouse looks at your neck and asks you “What’s that?” It’s a little brown…
“I Want to Be Me Again”: Harris Kupperman’s Brutal, Brilliant Investor Reboot
Just got finished with Harris Kupperman’s Q2 investor letter, which reads less like a traditional fund update and more like a raw, introspective journal entry. Despite a net gain of 3.59% for the quarter and 6.11% year-to-date, Kupperman opens with frustration. “I remain highly frustrated with the Fund’s performance over the past few quarters, and…
LOOK WHAT JUST HAPPENED! THE ECONOMIC STRUGGLE IS ABOUT TO GET CRAZIER FOR MOST PEOPLE
In this economic/financial news report we discuss the US economy just took a sharp downward turn and it’s about to get even harder for most working class people. Now people are deciding if they want to get out now or stay and face the more challenging economic environment and cost of living struggle. This channel…
Is Bitcoin Too Deep In The Fabric Of The U.S. Financial System?
Big news today: the Trump administration has formally approved a framework allowing Bitcoin to be offered as an investment option in select 401(k) retirement plans. This move, supported by recent regulatory shifts and increasing institutional pressure, opens the door for millions of Americans to allocate a portion of their retirement savings directly into BTC. While…
120 Million Square Feet: Store Closings In The United States Are On Pace To Set A New Record High In 2025
If everything is going to be just fine, why are thousands of stores closing all over the country? So far this year, the total amount of retail space that has been permanently closed has surpassed 120 million square feet. We have never seen anything like this before. Store closings spiked during the early days of…
Laffer Curve in the United Kingdom?
The FT has an interesting story on the British government’s attempt to boost capital gains tax revenue: The UK’s efforts to increase revenues from capital gains tax have backfired, with receipts plummeting in the wake of big cuts in allowances. The government’s CGT take fell 18 per cent from the previous year to £12.1bn in…
In-state tuition for illegal immigrants: A hidden cost to American families
Imagine that an American citizen fresh out of high school in Ohio has dreams of attending UCLA. With a perfect 4.0 GPA, extensive extracurricular activities, and high test scores, they secure acceptance into the competitive school. However, the student realizes they will be charged astronomical out-of-state fees, which are triple the cost of in-state tuition….
We Have Never Been Woke Part 4: Why Are Symbolic Capitalists Woke?
This is the fourth part of my exploration of Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). As we’ve seen, al-Gharbi spends a good deal of time establishing the demographic of people who are most likely to end up being “woke” as he described the term. And that group is overwhelmingly skewed…
The disappearing court packers
Once just the fever dream of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s, adding justices to the Supreme Court—i.e.: “court packing”—was resurrected by left-leaning advocacy nonprofits in 2020. In 2023, more than 40 such groups coalesced within Just Majority, a new intersectional amalgam that tried to fabricate the appearance of broad public support for the…
3 New Stocks That Have My Attention
Everybody on my blog knows about my 25 Stocks I’m Watching for 2025 that I wrote about at the beginning of the year — and are currently absolutely crushing the S&P 500. As of this writing, those names are outperforming the S&P 500 by an estimated 39.1% when weighted equally, as you can see in…
“The Year Of The Flood” Gets Even Worse: Monster Storms Cause Catastrophic Flooding in Hong Kong, India, South Korea, Taiwan And China
We have never seen a year quite like this. I wrote about “the year of the flood” on July 15th and July 27th, and now I am writing about it again. If I haven’t convinced you by now that something really weird is going on, I don’t know what to tell you. Record-breaking storms and…
Equality Before the Law, Equality of Permission, and the Language of Libertarianism
When we communicate with one another, how we say things can sometimes be as important as what we actually say. Words matter, which is even more true when we exchange ideas and try to convince others to embrace our viewpoints. Ideological rhetoric, then, merits some thought on the part of libertarians. Of course, libertarians uphold…
PEOPLE ARE SNAPPING AS THE ECONOMY WORSENS
In this economic/financial news report we discuss the worsening price-level situation, people are having breakdowns on camera due to unaffordable cost of living, we also discuss stocks, investing, overspending, and more. This channel contains news and analysis that often includes ‘one mans opinion’. The information conveyed should never be taken as investment advice. Everyone should…
Who Got the Biggest Percentage Tax Cuts?
The answer may surprise you. In so much of the discussion of tax cuts, whether of the recent one or previous tax cuts, we hear that the highest-income people got the biggest tax cuts. Of course, they did. They pay a disproportionately high percent of overall federal taxes. So it shouldn’t be surprising that they…
Fifty years after Hoffa, the Teamsters are still bad news
On July 30, 1975, James Riddle Hoffa—better known as Jimmy—went for lunch at a suburban Detroit diner. The former boss of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, notorious for his corruption and ties to the Mafia, was never seen alive again. Much has changed for the union in the intervening half-century, but despite the begging and…
Accounting Identities and Economic Theories
The relationship between accounting identities and economic model is frequently misunderstood. An accounting identity is an equality that must be true, by definition. It is tautology. It is meant to categorize and organize relationships between variables. For example Assets = Liabilities is an identity. Regardless what “assets” equals, “liabilities” must be the same amount. We…
The National Council of Nonprofits is a trade association for the left’s venture capital wing
In a June hearing titled “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild,” a U.S. House subcommittee examined charities that engage in lefty policy advocacy, sometimes with your tax dollars. Diane Yentel, president of the National Council of Nonprofits, rejected the premise. She told the committee that her members “feed, heal, shelter, and nurture people of every age,…
Immigrant memoir comics!
Today, instead of writing about economics as usual, I thought I’d do a culture post. I’ve given my lists of favorite sci-fi novels and anime series, so I thought I’d do another list — my favorite immigrant memoir comics. Immigrant memoir comics are my guilty pleasure. I just can’t get enough of reading about the…
Enough With The Fucking Central Park Horses Already
Every time I walk through Central Park, I think the same thing: enough with the fucking carriage horses. They look absolutely miserable. It’s horrifying to see them out there on 100 degree days trotting around the park. They leave huge piles of shit all over the city, and in this day and age—where we have…
MORE PEOPLE FLEE TO THE WOODS, COST OF LIVING CRISIS WORSENS
In this economic/financial news report we discuss rising prices, economic pain, cost of living nightmare, homeless people escape into the woods, loan defaults rising, investors, landlords, and wealthy making the money. This channel contains news and analysis that often includes ‘one mans opinion’. The information conveyed should never be taken as investment advice. Everyone should…
Was The Earth Really Hit By 396 Earthquakes Of Magnitude 5.0 Or Greater In 30 Days, Or Is The True Number Even Higher?
Why have there been so many large earthquakes in recent weeks? This is something that people on social media are really buzzing about right now. And I am certainly glad that they are buzzing about it, because what we have been witnessing is not even close to normal. We really are in the early chapters…
We Have Never Been Woke Part 3: Symbolic Capital and Symbolic Capitalists
The previous post in this series touched on Musa al-Gharbi’s identification of a class of people as “symbolic capitalists,” his contention that wokeness is the dominant ideology of this group, and that members of this group tend to be most predisposed to amplifying woke ideas. There are multiple “alternative names for symbolic capitalists” used by…
The Mellon Foundation’s Monumental Metamorphosis
2020 was an annus horribilis of disease, disruption, civil unrest, and acrimonious politics. It was also a year in which much of the charitable sector expanded its commitment to left-of-center ideological causes, specifically with respect to issues of race, ethnicity, and other immutable human characteristics. Often, this was couched in terms of a new (or…
InfluenceWatch Podcast #374: Dismantling the Censorship Machine
The Biden administration pursued a number of “whole of government” initiatives to advance the Everything Leftism that its staff brought with them into government. Some, like the initiative to promote union organizing, were highly publicized and formal. But others, like the online censorship regime the administration’s operatives sought to build, were more quietly constructed. With…
Sorts of Deals
A deal is an agreement to exchange something for some consideration, but different sorts of deals exist. A deal is not necessarily a free exchange and a free exchange is not necessarily a free-market exchange. The gold standard of all deals is a free-market exchange: a voluntary exchange where alternative demanders and suppliers exist. The…
Ten key Big Labor facts
As of 2025, fewer than 10 percent of all civilian workers and fewer than 6 percent of private-sector workers are members of labor unions. With those low levels of union membership, one might think that organized labor is not worth one’s time or interest. That would be a grave mistake. Despite its decreased footprint from…
The Fed’s Favorite Measure of Price Inflation Rises Again
By Ryan McMaken, Mises Institute Earlier this month, we looked at June’s CPI numbers and found that, yet again, the government’s own price-inflation data shows prices continue to grow above the central bank’s two-percent inflation target. As I reported on July 15, June’s CPI growth rate was the largest year-over-year increase in four months, and…
IT BEGINS, PEOPLE STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE, ECONOMIC COLLAPSE WORSENS, AWFUL JOBS DATA
In this economic/financial news report we discuss the worsening cost of living and financial struggles spearing to even higher income earners. This channel contains news and analysis that often includes ‘one mans opinion’. The information conveyed should never be taken as investment advice. Everyone should do their own due diligence and research before making investment…
Our Standard Of Living Is Collapsing And 25 Percent Of U.S. Households Are Skipping Meals So They Will Have Enough Money To Pay Their Bills
Are you old enough to remember when you could buy a really nice house for less than $50,000? Today, the average price of a home in the United States is more than half a million dollars. Of course everything else has become dramatically more expensive as well. I just asked Google, and I was told…
Last Week in Gold: Tariff Pressure Eases And ECB Holds Rates
By Peter Schiff, Schiff Gold Gold prices refused to budge much last week, with the LBMA Gold Price PM settling Friday at $3,344 per ounce—just 0.3 percent below the prior close. That leaves the metal up a dazzling 28.6 percent year-to-date, still among 2025’s best-performing assets despite a flurry of trade headlines and political theatrics….
The Case Against The Market’s Gravity-Defying Act
My readers know I believe there are only a handful of fund managers truly worth paying attention to—and one of them is Mark Spiegel, who’s been bearish on the market in recent years. And, like me, he’s been “wrong” as our market continues to defy gravity, reality, the laws of economics and common sense. I…
Nasdaq Composite Live: Markets Attempting to Recover from Post-Jobs Drop
Live Updates Live Coverage Updates appear automatically as they are published. Bank of America Reiterated a Buy Rating on Nvidia 8:44 am After dropping late last week on jobs growth and tariff concerns, the Nasdaq is turning aggressively higher in the pre-market. At the moment, it’s up 188 points at 23,073.75 Bank of America just…
Futures Rise, Recovering From Friday’s Dump On Rising Rate Cut Expectations
Futures Rise, Recovering From Friday’s Dump On Rising Rate Cut Expectations Futures are higher as markets rebound from last week’s sell-off amid increased expectations the Fed will ride to the rescue with rate cuts following Friday’s dismal US jobs data. As of 7:45am ET, S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures climbed 0.7% after the index had its…
Tesla Fined $243 Million By Florida Jury In Autopilot Crash Lawsuit
Tesla Fined $243 Million By Florida Jury In Autopilot Crash Lawsuit Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Tesla shares responsibility for an accident involving its vehicle’s Autopilot system, and must pay $243 million as compensation, a jury from the District Court, Southern District of Florida, said in an Aug. 1 verdict….
Gold Signals War – Martin Armstrong Warns Of “Panic Cycle In 2026”
Gold Signals War – Martin Armstrong Warns Of “Panic Cycle In 2026” Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com, Less than two weeks ago, legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong warned his “Socrates” predictive computer program showed a “100% Chance of Nuclear War.” Since then, a war of words has flared up between President Trump and Russia, and he…
3 Top Energy Stocks Set to Surge from Big Tech’s AI Spending Spree
Key Points in This Article: Big Tech’s $380 billion AI capex boom is fueling demand for chips and energy infrastructure. Chipmakers dominate as the primary beneficiary, but energy providers are critical for powering AI data centers. The hidden winners below will capitalize on the energy demands of Big Tech’s AI ambitions, driving significant growth. Nvidia…
Tesla Board Approves 96 Million Share Stock Award To “Retain” Elon Musk
Tesla Board Approves 96 Million Share Stock Award To “Retain” Elon Musk Tesla’s Board approved a special interim equity award for Elon Musk to compensate and retain him for “extraordinary work”. “As you know, Elon has not received meaningful compensation for eight years since the 2012 CEO Performance Award was last earned in 2017,” Robyn Denholm &…
UPenn Student Paper: School Caving To Trump Admin Over Men In Women’s Sports Is “Fascism”
UPenn Student Paper: School Caving To Trump Admin Over Men In Women’s Sports Is “Fascism” By Dave Huber of The College Fix The University of Pennsylvania student paper is very upset the school agreed to Trump administration demands regarding men’s participation in women’s sports — so much so it says UPenn is “descending into fascism” (its…
Is Dave Ramsey Right About Claiming Social Security At 62?
Key Points Retirees get to choose when to sign up for Social Security, and age 62 is the earliest opportunity. Claiming Social Security at 62 means locking in reduced benefits for life. Financial guru Dave Ramsey recommends claiming Social Security at 62, but there’s a caveat. Are you ahead, or behind on retirement? SmartAsset’s free…
This City’s Suburbs More Than Doubled In Population In The Last 10 Years
Key Points While the principal cities of metropolitan statistical areas grew by 5.9% from 2013 to 2023, the populations of outer suburbs grew by 11.9% over the same period. In one metro area, the suburbs more than doubled in size. Of the 40 cities with the fastest growing suburbs, 22 are in the South and…
”Enough Is Enough”: Boeing Fighter Jet Workers Begin Strike
”Enough Is Enough”: Boeing Fighter Jet Workers Begin Strike Update (0635ET): More than 3,200 union members who assemble Boeing’s fighter jets across multiple plants in the St. Louis area and Illinois went on strike earlier this morning, after voting on Sunday to reject a modified four-year labor deal with the defense company. This marks the…
The Risk Of Too Much Optimism
The Risk Of Too Much Optimism Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, After a long period of “complacency” in the market, volatility finally returned on Friday, dropping more than 1%. As we noted Friday morning, before the market opened: “While stretches have previously been longer, a consideration of such an event is that low volatility tends to beget…
The DOGE Files: Top ten ways to waste tax dollars
At the start of this year the Capital Research Center launched the DOGE Files, a new project named after the new government agency dedicated to rooting out waste fraud and abuse in the federal government. As part of that effort, CRC researchers spent weeks combing through thousands of pages of federal records to use our…
Most Americans Won’t Get COVID-19 Booster This Fall, Survey Says
Most Americans Won’t Get COVID-19 Booster This Fall, Survey Says Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), A majority of Americans said they will likely not receive a COVID-19 booster vaccine this fall, according to a poll released Friday. A woman receives a COVID-19 vaccine in Los Angeles, Calif., on March 25,…
What can India do to industrialize?
Photo by Previn Samuel on Unsplash I really believe that Indian industrialization is one of the most important stories in the world today. The fate of over a billion people — most of them still pretty poor — hinges crucially on the question of whether the world’s most populous nation can lift itself out of…
Go Ahead And Rage At Boomers, But The Problem Is The Entire Economic Order
Go Ahead And Rage At Boomers, But The Problem Is The Entire Economic Order Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, The entire economic order is bankrupt–ideologically, politically and financially. A friend sent me a clip of Tucker Carlson going off on the Boomer generation, and I get it. Tucker’s takedown was epic and entertaining…
German Military Sees 28% Surge In Recruits As Leaders Hype Russia Threat
German Military Sees 28% Surge In Recruits As Leaders Hype Russia Threat Germany’s historic reversal on its military posture and stregnth has long been on display since near the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. Berlin has been drastically expanding its military spending and is even recently mulling compulsory service for the nation’s armed forces. But…
Russia’s Nuclear Ambitions Face Funding Crisis
Russia’s Nuclear Ambitions Face Funding Crisis Via Eurasianet.org,m Russian energy entities, including Rosatom, are experiencing significant financing difficulties, raising doubts about their ability to fulfill international energy project commitments. Kazakhstan has decided to independently build thermal power plants originally contracted to Russia’s Inter RAO due to a lack of promised financing, and is increasingly turning to…
The Bureaucratic Tumor Killing Europe
The Bureaucratic Tumor Killing Europe By Thomas Kolbe Bureaucracy is flourishing in Germany and the EU like never before. Budget planning in Berlin and Brussels offers a clear glimpse into the state of the public sector—and at the same time, points toward the end of the economic cycle. A saying is making the rounds on…
What To Know About 7-OH, The Synthetic Opioid Derived From Kratom Facing An FDA Ban
What To Know About 7-OH, The Synthetic Opioid Derived From Kratom Facing An FDA Ban Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times, A synthetic opioid derived from the kratom plant sold in gummies, tablets, and drink mixes is slated to be restricted because of concerns that it has a serious potential for abuse….
