RealClearMarkets Articles

This week the Senate will vote on the GENIUS Act, which will enable banks to issue stablecoins. A similar bill on the House side, the STABLE Act, is also slowly moving towards passage. It seems the crypto industry will receive some combination of these bills – call it “A Very STABLE GENIUS” – but amendments to impose price controls on credit cards threaten to derail this necessary legislation.  Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are pegged to another commodity or currency, such as gold or the U.S. Dollar. They help expand access to dollar reserves or...

Remember those bold statements by the incoming Trump Administration about making the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet”? Remember how President Trump’s “crypto czar” David Sacks promised to usher in “a golden age in digital assets”? Remember when President Trump named cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins as the new chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), replacing stridently anti-crypto Gary Gensler, who never found a crypto pioneer he did not want to destroy?  President Trump himself promised that Chairman Atkins...

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust authority barely escaped intact from the House Judiciary Committee’s attempt to close it down and send all pending matters over to the Justice Department. The idea was sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman, Jim Jordan. It was in keeping with the DOGE effort to shrink the size of the federal government and eliminate agencies the administration considers superfluous.  Chairman Jordan pulled the proposal at the last minute out of a procedural concern that it was not tied closely enough to revenue and expenditures to...

New York Times reporters Ben Casselman and Colby Smith wrote on A1 yesterday that “There is a basic rule of thumb when it comes to the federal budget. The government should spend heavily during times of crisis – recessions, wars, pandemics – and then get its fiscal house in order when the crisis passes.” Casselman and Smith will be excused for getting the “rule of thumb” exactly backwards. They got their information from economists who near monolithically believe to be true what isn't. Governments don’t get their spending money from Pluto, rather they...

When it comes to corporate DEI agendas, we’ve seen a lot of apparent hypocrisy lately. One example is Verizon, the subject of a May 17 headline that announced “Verizon shuts down DEI policies for its 105,000 workers,” purportedly in exchange for the FCC’s approval of Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier, while a board member had made comments on May 14 suggesting Verizon was simply playing games with the FCC. Specifically, Axios quoted Oscar Health CEO Mark Bertolini on talking with the Trump administration: "You don't use certain words, like DEI, bad...

Government spending saps economic growth, which is no insight. Instead, it’s just a comment that the centralized and politicized allocation of goods, services and labor in sub-optimal fashion by politicians lays a wet blanket on economic growth.   What makes the economically enervating nature of government spending worth mentioning is the ongoing debate about state and local taxes, also known as SALT. Governors in high-tax blue states would like to return to the old state of tax play whereby state and local taxes paid could be 100 percent deducted against federal tax bills. Red...

Last month, the RealClearMarkets/TIPP survey was the first to offer a grounded reading: Consumer confidence softened, but panic was absent. In the weeks that followed, other surveys caught up to what we had already reported. This month, consumer sentiment showed meaningful improvement, edging closer to the neutral 50.0 threshold. The RealClearMarkets/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, a key gauge of consumer sentiment, climbed from 47.9 in May to 49.2 in June, representing a 2.7% increase. After hitting a 40-month high of 54.0 in December, the index eased to 51.9 in January and 52.0 in February...

The NFL has introduced numerous measures to improve player safety, including reforming concussion protocols, employing spotters, ejecting players for helmet-to-helmet hits, and reforming its kickoff rules in response to the ongoing problem. One of the most popular initiatives has been the league’s push for the use of guardian caps.  Guardian caps are soft-shell pads that are attached to the outside of helmets to decrease the impact of head contact and reduce the number of concussions football players suffer. Since their...

As the Senate prepares to begin consideration of the House-passed tax bill, the media and congressional Democrats are suddenly worried about budget deficits.  After cheering on the Biden spending spree the last four years, they are now warning of a fiscal disaster if the tax cuts are extended.Yes, the Senate should look for more spending cuts. But they should also be skeptical of any CBO deficit projection. CBO has not released an official cost estimate of the entire bill, and when it does, it will almost certainly be wrong. CBO has been issuing cost estimates for fifty years, and the...

When Bill Owens, longtime producer of the popular news show 60 Minutes, resigned in April it was natural that correspondent Scott Pelley would pay tribute to him. What was unexpected was that Pelley not only discussed why Owens was leaving—he openly sided with Owens against CBS’s management—but also explained that Owens left because Paramount (which owns CBS) “had began to supervise our content in new ways” and as as result Owens “felt he had lost the independence that honest journalism requires.” Pelley blamed the increased supervision of 60...

The Federal Communications Commission has opened two dockets to consider petitions to reduce the property rights of EchoStar in wireless licenses.  One docket examines whether EchoStar has met “buildout” requirements under its licenses.  The other docket examines whether, as a result of purported lack of intensive usage of certain licenses, EchoStar should share those licenses with other businesses. Under the wise leadership of Chairman Brendan Carr who does not want to undermine the wireless sector and the national economy, the FCC will...

The most undervalued industry in the world is the space industry. It is particularly unappreciated in Europe, which has now fallen hopelessly behind the United States and China. The US carried out 153 launches last year, China 68 and Europe three. The science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wrote back in 1977: “The impact of satellites on the entire human race will be at least the same impact as the advent of the telephone in so-called developed societies”. And he was right. Satellite mega-constellations such as Starlink, Qianfan, Kuiper, and Sat Net will ensure that the...

Taiwan Semiconductor founder Morris Chang is known to be skeptical about the TSMC plant in Arizona. Not only will it be incredibly challenging to reproduce stateside what TSMC has in Taiwan, Chang questions the geopolitical worth of diversifying production. To understand why, stop and consider the exacting, staggeringly sophisticated nature of TSMC’s operations in Taiwan, operations that loom so large in global economic output. In the “closed economy” that is the world economy, it’s then worth considering how economically devastating it would be for China’s...

Having grown up in West Virginia, the merger between U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel (which has just been approved by President Trump) hits close to home. My family and community relied on the coal and railroad industries—both deeply tied to steel production. A revitalized domestic steel industry with billions in new investment can boost demand for American coal, gas, and rail services, creating jobs and economic opportunities in a region that’s faced hard times. This isn’t just about steel; it’s about the livelihoods of countless Rust Belt and Appalachian...

Of the 261 acquisitions Alphabet Inc. — Google, to most of us — made between its 1998 founding and February of this year, just 10 were in excess of $1 billion in value. The largest of these, its 2011 purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, was double the value of its next largest purchase.  So, when the company announced in March it would pay $32 billion to buy the New York-headquartered cybersecurity startup Wiz, it took many by surprise. Not only was the magnitude of the deal out of character for...

With the clock ticking on the 90-day pause in President Donald Trump's tariff and trade war, it's time for the president to answer some questions.  After all, when the president systematically uses economic nationalism in public discourse, he shapes people’s minds—regardless of whether his statements are intended for political negotiations or reflect deeply held beliefs. And people’s minds have consequences. Furthermore, even if economic nationalism is used primarily to pressure concessions from trading partners, the likelihood of reaping the intended benefits...

The world becomes more amazing by the day. The surest evidence of the previous assertion is that wealth inequality continues to soar. Yes, you read that right. Inequality is a wonderful thing opposite the apologetic tone about it taken by left and right. Members of the left plainly disdain it, while members of the right claim it doesn’t exist in the way the left imagines, that thanks to transfer payments (yes, wealth redistribution by government) inequality isn’t that “bad.” Except that it’s not bad. It’s great. How could remarkable achievements that power...

The 28th Annual Milken Institute Global Conference kicked off live in Beverly Hills in May of 2025. This year, we present a RealClearMarkets exclusive interview with Dr. William Lee. Dr. William Lee is Chief Economist of the Milken Institute. Previously he was head of North America economics for Citigroup and was deputy division chief responsible for analytical chapters of the IMF’s flagship publication “The Global Financial Stability Report.” Before the IMF, Lee was senior economist and division chief of the financial markets division at the Federal Reserve Bank of New...

Congress is back at it again with more last-minute legislative antics. As the U.S. Senate considers the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act (S. 1582), which provides a regulatory structure for certain cryptocurrencies, certain lawmakers are attempting to slip the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA) as well as a 10 percent interest rate cap on credit cards into the bill. Both proposed policies are price controls that empower the federal government to dictate how financial services offered and provided to consumers across the country....