The website Age of Economics has been carrying out a series of interviews with economists about what the purpose of the discipline it is, and what its relationship is to capitalism as a historical social system. I believe there will be 52 of these interviews, one each week over the course of 2021. Earlier this spring, they interviewed Arjun Jayadev and myself. You can watch video of the interview here. I’ve pasted the transcript below. Q: Why does economics matter? JWM: The most obvious...

Kodak Deletes Instagram Post After Photographer Called Xinjiang "Orwellian Dystopia" Eastman Kodak deleted an Instagram post featuring photos from the Xinjiang region of China, where western governments and media have criticized Beijing for human rights violations against the majority-Muslim Uyghur people.  According to The New York Times, the now-deleted Instagram post featured the work of the French photographer Patrick Wack who released numerous images on Kodak film about...

Federal Court Rules CDC's COVID-19 Eviction Moratorium Is Unlawful By Jack Phillips of Epoch Times A federal court on Friday ruled that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) overstepped its authority by halting evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Cincinnati-based U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously agreed (pdf) with a lower court ruling that said the CDC engaged in federal overreach with the eviction moratorium, which the agency has...

89.3 The Real Reason El Salvador went Crypto———Ep 89.3 Summary———El Salvador announced its crypto intentions seemingly out of the blue. But a closer look reveals the nation had run dangerously short of (euro)dollars in early 2021. It went to the IMF for a bailout. Now it heads to the crypto world for one. Just like people did in the 14th-century. Wait, what?! ———See It——— Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_AIPTwitter: https://twitter.com/EmilKalinowskiAlhambra...

I’m just going to post some brief comments on other parts of the TIC data. The major takeaway from the May 2021 update is what I wrote earlier, how what these figures show is both entirely consistent with what will be to most people a surprisingly long history as well as completely misconstrued in mainstream conversations (what few may take place). We’ll begin with official institutions. They were again on the selling side of UST’s, after having been solidly reflationary buying (also...

Dubai Makes Artificial Rain With Drones That Shock Clouds The United Arab Emirates (UAE) uses drones that fly into clouds and deliver an electric shock to "cajole them" into producing precipitation amid dangerous heat waves regularly surpassing triple digits.  According to Daily Mail, UAE's National Center of Meteorology (NCM) is flying drones equipped with electric-charge emission instruments that deliver an electric charge to air molecules, which generally encourage...

Biden Gaffe Renews Questions About COVID Transparency Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClearPolitics.com, President Biden so desperately wants the vaccine-hesitant part of the country to get their shots that he may have spread a little misinformation. “You are not going to get COVID,” he promised during a CNN town-event Wednesday night, “if you have these vaccines.” Of course, this is not true. Biden knows it. He said as much later during the forum, explaining that,...

Mass Shootings On Course For Record Year As US Transforms Into Violent Mess To date, the number of mass shootings in the U.S. is 21% higher than the same period in 2020 (Jan.1 - July 20), which is 30% higher than the previous high, according to nonprofit research group Gun Violence Archive (GVA).  GVA's data so far shows the U.S. has recorded 375 mass shootings in 41 different states (and Washington D.C.) in the first 200 days of 2021. Putting that in perspective, the country...

A Gold Medal Question: Should Women's Sports Even Exist? Authored by Charles Lipson via RealClearPolitics.com, The Tokyo Olympics prompted the latest furor over transgender participation in women’s sports. It came when New Zealand named a transgender woman to its weightlifting team. This athlete’s participation raises questions far beyond this Olympics or that particular sport. The same questions arise whenever a transgender person competes at any level, from high school to...

Like so many other monetary things, the name itself is misleading though it’s not immediately clear why. The Asian Financial Crisis (or Asian flu, as many called it back in the day) began in Thailand, became a financial crisis, and spread throughout, well, Asia. How else would anyone label it?This name, however, radiates an impression that this was a lot of fuss and bother for overseas concerns and only overseas. Not so. The disruption may have begun seemingly innocuously in far-flung...