One of the running themes of this website over the last 6 years is the idea that the US economy is not doing nearly as well as it should be, however, that it’s also not doing nearly as bad as some people would have us believe. I’ve called this period in history the “Era of Irrational Apathy”. Unfortunately, whenever I publish something like the recent post on the solvency of the USA I get a lot of pushback from people arguing that American living standards are in some sort of termi...| Pragmatic Capitalism
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The word “Keynesian” has become synonymous with “socialist” in the last few decades. This is strange because Keynes identified himself as a capitalist and regularly criticized socialism (I too identify as a capitalist and reject socialism). It seems that the term “socialism” has become a rallying cry for politicians and the general public has come to view Keynesian economics as a form of “big government” economics. The reality is that the only people who could possibly think K...| Pragmatic Capitalism
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1) The Competition for Worst Ideology is Heating Up | Pragmatic Capitalism
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene got a lot of attention over the weekend when she stated that the USA needs a “national divorce”:| Pragmatic Capitalism
When I was 10 years old I read the classic “Where the Red Fern Grows”. It’s a book about a young boy who adopts two dogs who eventually get into a fight with a mountain lion and die. I hated that book because it was the first time I was really confronted with the concept of death in a deeply emotional way. | Pragmatic Capitalism
Here’s the second batch of answers from the Ask Me Anything. If you missed part 1 you can catch it here. | Pragmatic Capitalism
Here’s the first batch of answers from the Ask Me Anything. We covered a lot of ground in here including my view on factor investing, the FIRE movement, asset allocation in retirement, how bonds work and Fed policy. | Pragmatic Capitalism
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* This is a bit off topic, but as a casual golfer/watcher and economic nerd I think it’s an interesting topic. | Pragmatic Capitalism
It’s now been one year since Standard and Poors downgraded the debt of the USA from AAA to AA+. If you recall, many pundits were saying this would be an earth shattering event and that it was a sign of much bigger problems to come. Some even said it could cause a Eurostyle debt spiral in the USA where bond vigilantes attack and yields surge causing a funding crisis and even a potential default. But what’s actually happened? As you can see in figure 1 below yields have actually con...| Pragmatic Capitalism
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I’m writing this in a Parisian cafe in the year 2050. I’m doing a reverse Hemingway, trying to become a better writer as I get into my 70s while I do part-time consulting in what has, to my surprise, become the center of the western financial world. Unfortunately, my writing is also doing a reverse Hemingway, in terms of quality, not that it was ever close to begin with. I always loved sitting on these porches sipping coffee for hours paying in Dollars that made everything in Europe feel...| Pragmatic Capitalism
It’s been over 10 years since I published Understanding the Modern Monetary System, one of the most widely read papers in the SSRN research database. I published this paper because I was having trouble finding a succinct but thorough explanation of money and macroeconomics during the financial crisis. Further, many of the mainstream explanations of concepts like QE, banking, inflation and money appeared outdated at best and wrong at worst. Since then most of the concepts in this paper have ...| Pragmatic Capitalism
I joined The Investor’s Podcast again this week to discuss a wide range of topics. The YouTube chapters in the interview are linked below and you can listen to the full audio here. | Pragmatic Capitalism
Thanks to everyone who has read Pragmatic Capitalism for the last 15 years. I’ve loved writing this blog, but we need to consolidate our financial content going forward. It’s become too difficult publishing content to so many different platforms and when Google killed Feedburner it compounded the problems. | Pragmatic Capitalism