French Quarter

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  • Douglas French

Making Real Estate Bubbles, Not Jobs Oct 21, 2014

The Fed has more than quadrupled its balance sheet from 2008 to now, attempting to create jobs. The result: a 1.7 million increase in the number of unemployed, a 2.8 million increase in the number of those employed part-time for economic reasons, and a decline in the labor participation rate from 66% to 62.7%. Nationwide, nearly 11% of mortgaged properties are underwater, according to CoreLogic.

By Douglas French Vote3 1

Foreign Policy Jumps the Shark Oct 14, 2014

Anyone who watched Happy Days remembers the moment (episode 5.3, 1977). The Fonz on water skies, in his leather jacket and powder blue swim trunks; Richie Cunningham driving the boat. “Do you really want to do it?” Richie yells back to Fonzie. A thumb’s up is his reply. The famous fifties cool guy soared over a shark pen, and the series was never the same. From that idiocy an idiom was born. “Jump the Shark” describes the moment when a television show begins to decline in quality, the point where writers reach for a gimmick to keep a show going....

By Douglas French Vote5 0

No Matter Who Wins, a Sociopath Is Elected Sep 26, 2014

The midterm election season is upon us, and it’s a tossup whether the Republicans will win the Senate, or if President Obama, seemingly oblivious as conflict flares up around the world, will, through his continuous campaigning, keep Harry Reid in his majority leader seat. The only thing we know for sure is that sociopaths will be elected. The electorate must by now recognize they are electing incompetents at best, and at worst, crooks, but the constant, naïve, pro-democracy mantra is, “We just need to elect the right people.”

By Douglas French Vote21 2

Why Isabel is Great Aug 24, 2014

Who saw this mess coming, and who saw the way out? Most intellectuals of the 20th century cheered the rise of Leviathan. Only a handful dissented. It’s about time we separate the wheat from the chaff. Isabel Paterson's The God of the Machine was one of four magisterial libertarian works to be published in the dark days of 1943. Also released that year were Albert Jay Nock's Memoirs of a Superfluous Man; Rose Wilder Lane's The Discovery of Freedom; and, by far the most famous, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. You may not know of Ms. Paterson, but she influenced many...

By Douglas French Vote5 2

Dangerous Best Intentions Aug 15, 2014

This article originally appeared on Casey Research.   Those of us who believe in liberty often think the people running government must know what they do is evil. They couldn’t possibly be stupid or naive enough to honestly believe what they are doing is right. This was a lunch conversation started with my friend, Liberty.me CEO Jeffrey Tucker, who had just returned from a conference devoted to discussing a fascinating historical novel called Red Plenty. A book set in the USSR, when the statistics and Sputnik signaled it was the Soviet Union’s—and more importantly, communism’s—moment. For that brief time, writes...

By Douglas French Vote5 0

The Battle Against Economic Stupidity Jul 24, 2014

This article originally appeared at lfb.org. Turn on the tube and economic ignorance seems to be everywhere. There is constant shilling for more government. Business is demonized. Man is said to be trashing the environment. “Workers and women are oppressed” is the constant mantra. And members of the clueless media nod their heads in unison. Only John Stossel has provided the fresh air of economic wisdom from his days on ABC’s 20/20 to his currently running Stossel on Fox Business. He admits in his book Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity that he too used to believe the Big Government propaganda, but...

By Douglas French Vote2 0

The Insider Rich, Get Richer Jul 23, 2014

CIT Group’s announced purchase of OneWest Bank means an investment group's 2009 purchase of the bank, formerly known as IndyMac Bank, will produce a return of 3.35 times its initial investment, The group is backed by John Paulson, George Soros, Michael Dell and Christopher Flowers. Ironically, it was six years ago, almost to the day, that depositors were lined up outside IndyMac branches desperately wanting their money. George Bailey was nowhere in sight. Most depositors were made whole by the FDIC, but customers holding $1 billion in deposits were out of luck. So were shareholders, who watched the stock plunge...

By Douglas French Vote7 1

When Zero Is Too High Jul 8, 2014

This article originally appeared at The Freeman. Central banking has taken interest rate reduction to its absurd conclusion. If observers thought the European Central Bank (ECB) had run out of room by holding its deposit rate at zero, Mario Draghi proved he is creative, cutting the ECB’s deposit rate to minus 0.10 percent, making it the first major central bank to institute a negative rate. Can a central-bank edict force present goods to no longer have a premium over future goods? Armed with high-powered math and models dancing in their heads, modern central bankers believe they are only limited by...

By Douglas French Vote5 0

Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity Jul 1, 2014

This article originally appeared at Casey Research.   The minimum wage should be the easiest issue to understand for the economically savvy. If the government arbitrarily sets a floor for wages above that set by the market, jobs will be lost. Even the Congressional Budget Office admits that 500,000 jobs would be lost with a $10.10 federal minimum wage. Who knows how high the real number would be? Yet here we go again with the “Raise the minimum wage” talk at a time when unemployment is still devastating much of the country. The number of Americans jobless for 27 weeks...

By Douglas French Vote9 2

Central Banks: Employment Creators or Mega-Hedge Funds Jul 1, 2014

This article was originally appeared on Laissez Faire Today   The Keynesian disaster recovery plan has been to lower rates, force people to take more risk in search of yield, and entice others to borrow and spend and, magically, more jobs will be created. If people won't buy stocks, central banks will. Back in 2011, Ben Bernanke, when asked if QE2 was driving up stock prices, answered, "I do think that our policies have contributed to a stronger stock market, just as they did in March of 2009." He went on to say since he signaled the Fed would likely...

By Douglas French Vote2 0

Whiskey: For Drinking or Hoarding? Jun 20, 2014

This article originally appeared at Casey Research.   A comedian quipped a few years ago, “You might be a redneck if your 401(k) is invested in NASCAR decanters.” When cheap money creates bubbles, suddenly the absurd become investment strategies. Whiskey, for instance, isn’t just for drinking anymore. There’s a bull market in hoarding this precious liquid. Whiskey Bull Beyond the deluge of new high-end brands and colors added to Johnny Walker’s rainbow, Charles Passy wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “Spirits and collectibles experts say we’re in something of a bull market for whiskey.” Scottish company Whisky Highland says, “Prices...

By Douglas French Vote4 1

A Little Something About Four Great Books Jun 4, 2014

The Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen This tiny book packs a huge wallop. Cowan argues the low hanging fruit has been picked and America already ate it. Valuable ideas are harder and harder to come by. Those getting rich are doing it through financial innovation that doesn’t improve the lives of very many people. Besides the internet we live about the same as people did 50 years ago. GDP grows but that phony number includes government that as it grows larger becomes less productive. The marginal value of government is falling. Since no market values government expenditures, GDP figures have no...

By Douglas French Vote0 1

Minimum Wage: Making People Useless Jun 3, 2014

Karl Marx must be smiling. It’s capital vs. labor all over again. Income inequality is on the tip of every pundit and politician’s tongue. Thomas Piketty’s bestselling nonfiction tome, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, lends credibility to the Marxian notion that labor is doomed to a perpetually shrinking share of wealth. “Capital is dead labor,” wrote Marx, ”which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.” In other words, labor makes machines that replace labor, leading to something else Marx wrote: “The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”...

By Douglas French Vote23 4

How to Grab Profits that are Just Out of Reach May 28, 2014

When Michael Lewis’ new book Flash Boys came out, the author caused a stir while making the media rounds to promote it. “The stock market is rigged,” he told 60 Minutes flatly. His comments set off a firestorm of debate as to whether sharp techies and their fast computers are screwing small investors. As titillating as that sound bite was, those who take aim at high-frequency trading (HFT) need to reconsider their targets. The computers of HFT firms jump ahead of investors buying stock, purchasing shares from the seller and in turn selling to the buyer, making a few pennies of profit in between....

By Douglas French Vote7 2

The Book That Made Orange The New Black May 28, 2014

In a piece for Casey Research I explore the idea that America’s incarceration nation may have peaked. Instead of throwing thousands behind bars for marijuana infractions, voters in bankrupt states will likely choose to legalize pot and start taxing the stuff. At the christmas party for the local bar association last night I spoke with an assistant DA who admitted that even in Alabama the views toward marijuana are changing.  It can’t happen soon enough. A read of Piper Kerman’s book Orange is the New Black would soften even the most dark hearted law and order zealot. The circumstances of Kerman’s imprisonment are so...

By Douglas French Vote2 0

Capital Barbarism May 24, 2014

The state of Oklahoma demonstrated something else government can’t do right–capital punishment. Clayton Lockett was judged by the state to die, but the state’s three drug cocktail didn’t work, leaving the inmate writhing in pain, gritting his teeth, and struggling against restraints for 43 minutes until he died of a heart attack. “This is one of the worst botches that we’ve had,” Deborah Denno, a lethal injection expert and law professor at Fordham Law School, said, “All of this was predictable and foreseeable. How many times does this have to take place?” This is far from the first ghoulish execution...

By Douglas French Vote11 2

Doug French: The Injustice System, Darrow’s Resist Not Evil May 19, 2014

Kyle Platt speaks with Doug French, Executive Editor or Agora Financial and former President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, about Clarence Darrow's almost forgotten book, Resist Not Evil, and the the implications of this scathing critique of the American justice system. Resist Not Evil will be available for download in the library of Liberty.me soon! Doug French will also be teaching a class on it for Liberty.meU Doug French: The Injustice System, Darrow's Resist Not Evil

By Douglas French Vote3 0

A Simple Guide to Discovering Your Inner Economist May 7, 2014

Author and professor Tyler Cowen describes himself as “a curious intellectual nerd polymath,” which by itself doesn’t sound too promising. But he is perfect for the job. The “loving husband and stepdad” offers more common sense than the average nerdy economist. I was already a big fan of Cowen’s before I picked up Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist, but the further I read into this wonderful book, the smarter (and funnier) he got. Discovering your “Inner Economist” doesn’t mean thinking about indifference curves and such mysteries. There are more...

By Douglas French Vote6 0

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