09/20/2021
Today
Bret Swanson, RCM A trove of internal Facebook documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal confirms what has been obvious for several years: Facebook exempts select VIPs from its content moderation rules while imposing harsh censorship on disfavored influential figures and regular joes. This evidence highlights several untested clauses of Section 230, one of which immunizes online platforms from liability if they moderate their sites in "good faith." Does good faith include some measure of neutrality and equal application of rules? We don't know because this law has never been fully adjudicated. Supreme... |
Stacy Cowley, NYT The threshold of 100 employees adds to a patchwork of small-business rules. It shows up in no other major small-business laws. The reasoning behind the number is a mystery. |
John Tamny, Forbes If a virus is spreading, it's unwise to take away a right that many would take from themselves voluntarily. |
Ryan Cooper, Week A 'Wall Street Journal' series reveals how the platform's problems are directly produced by its operations and design |
Donald Boudreaux, Am. Inst. for Economic Research "As Mises summarized the fate of a fully socialized economy, 'As soon as one gives up the conception of a freely established monetary price for goods of a higher order, rational production becomes completely impossible.'" ~ Donald J. Boudreaux |
Kim Iskyan, American Consequences Ignore BlackRock's self-serving proclamation for investors to stampede into Chinese markets – Xi Jinping doesn't want (or need) your money. |
Michael LaFaive, The Hill It is frustrating to hear so many in Congress buy into bigger spending, higher taxes and profoundly coercive regulation. |
Jonathan Chait, New York A misleading conservative talking point that refuses to die. |
Brian Albrecht, RCM The Round 1 bell of the antitrust fight just rang, and despite taking a beating, Big Tech is still standing. But the brawl is far from over, and by the looks of the way they're judging the matchup, a win for Tech in the long term seems unlikely. Last Friday, a federal judge handed down decisions on Epic Games' lawsuit against Apple (go here for a blow-by-blow). The judge ruled in Apple's favor on nine out of ten counts. That might seem like a win for Big Tech (9/10 can't be bad, right?), but the tenth count makes all the difference. Under California law, the judge forced Apple not to enforce... |
Julia Horowitz, CNN Mention the word "stagflation" to someone who followed the economy in the 1970s, and you can expect a strong reaction. |
Charles Gasparino, New York Post With the cryptocurrency market rising, Securities and Exchange Commission boss Gary Gensler wants to push it away by adding too much red tape for crypto businesses, Charles Gasparino writes. |
Market Minder, Fisher Investments Spiking power costs are hitting factories, but the economic impact should be smaller than headlines suggest. |
Kathy Jones, Charles Schwab The bond market has been in hibernation for months, and investors may have become complacent about risks. |
Jeffrey Kleintop, Charles Schwab A gradual slowing of stimulus heralds a potential drop for the world's stock markets, but the evidence suggests a possibility for a positive outcome. |
macromon, Global Macro Monitor As summer fades, the global economy is downshifting from months of super-charged growth, pumped up by unprecedented fiscal and monetary policy measures. Growth will continue throughout the year but at a sharply decelerating rate, and inflation will remain stubbornly high. |
Employ America, Medium The combination of macroeconomic data-points and policy responses observed in the 1950s would suggest — under models of the 1970s — that runaway inflation was imminent. Instead, inflationary pressures quickly resolved themselves as the economic situation changed and new capacity was built out. |
Bill McBride, Calculated Risk Some preliminary data and analysis |
Marko Csokasi, Commodity.com Find out which 50 US states spend the most money on welfare. We also cover statistics like local spend and cash assistance, and vendor funds. |
Editors, CareerCloud With more than 10 million job openings reported by the federal government and almost 9 million people jobless, the simple math would seem to indicate there's a job for every person. But businesses across the country are facing a huge labor shortage. Some businesses have changed their hours because t |
Candace Jackson, New York Times The pandemic put a general crimp in housing construction, but made a California factory that churns out prefabricated housing extra busy. |
Daniel Matamala, ProMarket How did a group of University of Chicago-trained economists manage to turn Chile into the cradle of neoliberalism? |
Debra Kamin, NY Times The mortgages have helped millions of soldiers buy homes, but they carry a mostly unfair stigma that has kept many families out of today's competitive market. |
Robert Skidelsky, Project Syndicate Quantitative easing risks generating its own boom-and-bust cycles, and can thus be seen as an example of state-created financial instability. Governments must now abandon the fiction that central banks create money independently from government, and must themselves spend the money created at their behest. |
Eric Boehm, Reason Biden's plan will raise taxes on individuals earning as little as $30,000 annually by 2027, but that's just a trick to make the overall cost of the bill look lower than it really is. |
Matt Egan, CNN Business The implosion of Lehman Brothers, 13 years ago this week, showed how the collapse of a single entity can send shockwaves around the world. |
Jakir Hossain, Morningstar We think the market is over-reacting to new drug pricing proposals, creating a buying opportunity. |
John H. Cochrane, PS Generally speaking, inflation can be stabilized with little recession if people believe the necessary policy tightening will be seen through, rather than abandoned at the first signs of pain. Unfortunately, US economic authorities have done little to inspire such confidence. |
Steve Malanga, City Journal Democrats press the president to reinstate a tax break for the wealthy. |
Amy Arnott, Morningstar Sequence-of-returns risk matters for both retirees and savers. Here's why. |
Charles de Trenck, Evergreen Gavekal Shortages are the biggest theme right now. |
Ben Carlson, AWOCS Norm Macdonald and others who bet big and lose big. |
Rayna M Letourneau, The Conversation Long-term solutions to the nursing shortage call for changes that value nurses and offer them a safe place to work. |
Jamie Catherwood, Investor Amnesia Wars are expensive. |
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