by Runaway Slave | Dec 13, 2011 | bailouts, Bubble, Education, Libertarian Curmudgeon
I have a college degree that I earned 40 years ago. I can honestly say it has never earned me a cent. Whatever the government pumps easy money into will eventually find itself in a price bubble. Housing is the most recent and most obvious bubble, but it’s not...
by Runaway Slave | Oct 20, 2009 | Bubble, bull market, Economics, gold, investing, Libertarian Curmudgeon, precious metals
A friend of mine recently told me he was thinking of loading up his credit cards to use the money to buy silver. My friend isn’t a professional speculator, nor does he really have very much experience in speculation of any kind. I told him I thought such a move...
by Runaway Slave | Dec 26, 2007 | Bubble, Economics, Essays & Articles, Libertarian Curmudgeon
I like perusing the classified ads in La Nación. La Nación is the big, serious daily newspaper in San Jose, Costa Rica. Like all dailies down here it’s a tabloid. By calling it the "serious" paper, I mean there is less rolling girl-flesh in the...
by Runaway Slave | Oct 31, 2007 | Bubble, Economics, Essays & Articles, Libertarian Curmudgeon
Inflation, diluting the money supply with worthless tokens, either by borrowing money into existence or by printing it, transfers wealth from the people who produce it to people who use it to buy political power. It’s a nasty, pious fraud, but the real harm goes...
by Runaway Slave | Aug 22, 2007 | Bubble, Debt, Economics, Government, Libertarian Curmudgeon
Fed interference in the markets appears on the surface to benefit everyone. A bailout is a bailout, right? That’s not how it works in reality, however. There are always bettors on both sides of the bet. The Fed’s last intervention, at the last possible...
by Runaway Slave | Jun 26, 2007 | Bubble, Costa Rica, Economics, Essays & Articles, Gold, Inflation, Libertarian Curmudgeon
Asset bubbles are the result of easy credit and a natural human desire to get something for nothing. The long-term increase in all prices and the occasional price explosion for certain assets occurs primarily because there is no standard for the unit we use to measure...
by Runaway Slave | Mar 21, 2007 | Bubble, Economics, Essays & Articles, Inflation, Libertarian Curmudgeon
Real estate is still a topic of great interest both here in Costa Rica and there in sunny Key West. As I am inclined to look back in time to satisfy my curiosity about the future, I found the following graph interesting. It shows the history of housing prices in the...
by Runaway Slave | Dec 7, 2006 | Bubble, Essays & Articles, Government, Hope, Key West, Libertarian Curmudgeon
One of the first things I noticed returning to Key West after almost a year in Central America is the number of shiny new public buildings in town. Almost all public buildings in Costa Rica have a humble, flaking-paint shabbiness about them that seems to assure the...