Henry George: Prophet of the Gilded Age

In 1873, Mark Twain published his satirical novel, The Gilded Age, an era magnificently recreated in all its greed, ruthlessness and ostentation in the new HBO series of the same name. Railroads were the hot investment of the day, fueling a frenzy of land speculation. In September of that year, a big New York City bank suddenly went bankrupt. Bank runs began across the country, railroads failed, businesses cut wages and laid off workers. The police beat up unemployed protesters. A young San Francisco journalist, Henry George, struggled to keep his newspaper going and his family fed. Appalled by the suffering he witnessed, he sat down to write a book that would change the world: Progress and Poverty (1879). . . . → Read More: Henry George: Prophet of the Gilded Age

Webinar with Richard Vague, author of A Brief History of Doom, May 17, 2020

In A Brief History of Doom, Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises, Richard Vague simultaneously fills in a gap in Henry George’s economic model, and torpedoes the conventional Keynesian model of the business cycle. . . . → Read More: Webinar with Richard Vague, author of A Brief History of Doom, May 17, 2020

The Big Bean Bubble

In the mini-economy of Beanland, reckless bank lending has caused a crash. Hardly anybody has money to buy beans. The price of beans plummets. To the farmers it looks like there’s a bean surplus. Actually, there’s a deficit in demand for beans. . . . → Read More: The Big Bean Bubble

How to Fix the Great Real Estate After-Bubble

The Washington Post April 21 headlines an article “Wall Street betting billions on single-family homes in distressed markets.” The article continues, “Drawn by the prospect of double-figure profit margins on rents and the resale of homes whose prices plummeted in the crash, hedge funds, Wall Street investors and other institutions are crowding out individual home . . . → Read More: How to Fix the Great Real Estate After-Bubble

Capturing the Multinational Dragons’ Gold

As medieval dragons do, the dragon in the Beowulf epic sleeps on a pile of gold. With magic sword and shield, Beowulf kills the dragon and, mortally wounded, distributes the gold to his grateful people. Today’s multinational dragons sleep not on gold, but on hoards of cash. Meanwhile little firms—the true “job creators”—perish for want of cash. We don’t need to assault the dragons; we do need to tear away the tax privileges on which they depend. . . . → Read More: Capturing the Multinational Dragons’ Gold

Income Inequality and Financial Crises, NYT, Aug 21

A New York Times article by Louise Story asks, “Do widening gaps between rich and poor necessarily lead to financial crises?” (Aug. 21) The answer is yes, for a reason observed over 100 years ago by American economist and reformer Henry George: Economic growth enhances the value of titles to real estate and other natural . . . → Read More: Income Inequality and Financial Crises, NYT, Aug 21

The Great Real Estate Bubble of the Roaring Twenties

Economists conventionally attribute the Great Depression to blunders by the then-new Federal Reserve Bank. According to this story, promoted by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School, after the stock market crash of 1929, the Fed kept interest rates too high, strangling the economy. This story made most economists confident that it couldn’t happen again.

But . . . → Read More: The Great Real Estate Bubble of the Roaring Twenties

The Great Crash of 2008, by Mason Gaffney

This crash is The Big One; it has signs of becoming a Category 5. How do we know? We’ve “been there and done that” so many times before, roughly every 18 years over the last 800 or more. Major wars and, rarely, plagues have broken the rhythm, along with the little ice age, reformation and . . . → Read More: The Great Crash of 2008, by Mason Gaffney

The Great Crash of 2008, by Mason Gaffney

This crash is The Big One; it has signs of becoming a Category 5. How do we know? We’ve “been there and done that” so many times before, roughly every 18 years over the last 800 or more. Major wars and, rarely, plagues have broken the rhythm, along with the little ice age, reformation and . . . → Read More: The Great Crash of 2008, by Mason Gaffney

Bubble, CPI and CEO Bonuses

Mike Hudson has scored the cover story in the May Harper’s: “The New Road to Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse.” Our hapless middle class real estate speculators, or innocent homebuyers, pursue the dream of “economic freedom,” taking on ever greater debt to snap up appreciating real estate. But eventually, when . . . → Read More: Bubble, CPI and CEO Bonuses