Monty Pelerin's World ► Economics, Politics and Investing

Quality of a Society

January 9, 2023

For those who equate well-being with GDP, personal wealth or stock market gains, I refer you to an article which deals with how these things…

What we can learn from the 17 stock market crashes since 1870

New Year Stock Returns

January 8, 2023January 7, 2023

The first full week of the new year showed market optimism. All four of the components I track rose as summarized in the following table:…

Same Downward Drift

January 1, 2023January 1, 2023

Markets ended the year with more of the same downward drift. The Federal Reserve continues its hardline against inflation (which it is responsible for creating).…

What Appears to Be

December 28, 2022December 27, 2022

I have not verified the following (sent by a friend). It reflects the nature and adaptability of man. It also reflects how every life, no …

Government Corruption on Display

December 27, 2022

The irrationality triggered by Trump’s election revealed the political class to be dumber, more corrupt and more desperate than previously imagined. The myth of government…

Fed Carnage Continues

December 24, 2022December 24, 2022

Fed carnage continues to drive most markets down. The table below shows four key categories and how they have performed since July 26, the day…

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression. H. L. Mencken
My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare. Otto von Bismarck
We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice. Friedrich Hayek
... I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. Benjamin Franklin
[On the meaning of "general welfare"] I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted. James Madison

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