Policy and Government

In The Hill, Stephen Moore says it’s the Trump economy, stupid.

From Investor’s Business Daily, Adam Brandon says trade deficits are meaningless.

At Forbes.com, John Tamny explains why ‘retirement crisis’ fears are overblown.

At Reuters, Dhara Ranasinghe and Tommy Wilkes report oil hits $70/barrel.

Monetary

At New Money Review, Prof. Larry White provides an interview explaining how cryptocurrencies are merely the latest innovation in private money, an asset class with a long history.

At Cato.org (and Forbes.com), Steve Hanke shares nine thoughts on money, quoting Paul Volcker:

“We sometimes forget that central banking, as we know it today, is, in fact, largely an invention of the past hundred years or so, even though a few central banks can trace their ancestry back to the early nineteenth century or before. It is a sobering fact that the prominence of central banks in this century has coincided with a general tendency towards more inflation, not less. By and large, if the overriding objective is price stability, we did better with the nineteenth-century gold standard and passive central banks, with currency boards, or even with “free banking.” The truly unique power of a central bank, after all, is the power to create money, and ultimately the power to create is the power to destroy.”

Spending

At the The Washington Post, Bob Samuelson lays out how Sen. Sanders, off his meds again, promises 15M $15/hour jobs, a promise critiqued by the far left Mother Jones:

 “Even our lefty comrades in social democratic Europe don’t guarantee jobs for everyone. It would cost a fortune; it would massively disrupt the private labor market; it would almost certainly tank productivity; and it’s unlikely in the extreme that the millions of workers in this program could ever be made fully competent at their jobs.”