A group of artists have won a landmark victory over the Happy Birthday song. A California judge ruled that the copyrights to one of the world's most popular melodies is invalid. As a result, Happy Birthday enters the public domain while a multi-million dollar licensing business is destroyed.
Starting today everyone is free use “Happy Birthday” without having to pay a license fee, as a California federal court ruling just entered the popular song into the public domain. ... (more)
In every economic exchange, both sides benefit, each from his own individual, personal perspective. That's because each trader gives up something he values less for something he values more. Thus, at the moment of the trade, each of the traders is better off than he was before the trade. The standard of living of both traders has been improved by the simple act of trade.
Every dictator knows that a continuous state of emergency is the best means to justify tyrannical policies. The trick is to keep the fictitious emergency from breeding so much paranoia that routine activities come to a halt. Many have discovered that its best to make the threat external, intangible and ultimately, unverifiable. In Orwell's 1984 the preferred mantra was "We've always been at war with Eurasia," even though everyone knew it wasn't true. In its rate decision this week the Federal Re... (more)
Once again the Fed’s bite has failed to live up to its bark. Despite months of expectations that it would finally raise rates for the first time since 2006, the Fed continued to sit on its hands while pointing to some unspecified date in the future when all the economic and financial stars will align in a way that makes a 25 basis point increase appropriate. Am I the only one getting bored by the repetition?
Just like it has in prior statements, the Fed’s Open Market Committee pai... (more)
We seem to be panicking about China's economy. Let's pause and look at some of the facts.
First, consider the short-term concerns that sent shock waves across the world. Unlike the United States, where very developed capital markets are connected to the economy at large, in China the linkage is less strong. Even so, what has really happened to the stock market over there? The Shanghai Composite Index has dropped from 5,166 in June of this year to 3,005 as I write this--about 4... (more)
The other day I was having coffee with a new friend, a retired businessman who customized luxury cars in California. I mentioned I had recently retired from owning an investment firm and had many years of study of economics, especially Austrian Economics.
As so many people I have met before him, he said, "I really don’t understand economics and always have been confused by it."
To which I surprised him with, "Of course you understand economics; it is the thought pro... (more)
Today the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada, released the 2015 Economic Freedom of the World report (pdf) and it's bad news for the United States, where economic freedom is falling. The U.S. ranks only 16th in economic freedom... (more)
After nearly 20 years of wrangling over what is and is not legal under California's 1996 Proposition 215 medical marijuana law, the state legislature has passed a set of bills designed to bring order to the chaos.
After working with Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on acceptable language, the Assembly and the Senate Friday passed Assembly Bill 243, Assembly Bill 266, and Senate Bill 643. The session ended at midnight.
If, as expected, Gov. Brown signs the bills int... (more)
So many skyscrapers are being built right now that there has emerged a shortage in the special glass panels that forms the exterior of most modern skyscrapers.There are more than 100 skyscrapers currently under construction that are designed to be over 1000 feet tall with the tallest one designed to be 1000 meters tall. With all this construction under way there has emerged a shortage of the specialized glass panels that form the exterior of most modern skyscrapers. This probably means that prod... (more)
Recent volatility has Americans talking about the stock market -- and getting a lot of things wrong in the process. Let's discuss some general principles to help clear things up.
(Let me say up front that I won't be disclosing which stocks are going to go up next month. Even if I knew, it would ruin my advantage to tell everybody.)
1. Money doesn't go "into" or "out of" the stock market in the way most people think.
Why are the global elite buying extremely remote compounds that come with their own private airstrips in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the planet? And why did they start dumping stocks like crazy earlier this year? Do they know something that the rest of us don’t? The things that I am about to share with you are quite alarming. It appears that the global elite have a really good idea of what is coming, and they have already taken substantial steps to prepare for it. Sadly, most... (more)
Shortly after the PBoC's move to devalue the yuan, we noted with some alarm that it looked as though China may have drawn down its reserves by more than $100 billion in the space of just two weeks. That, we went on the point out, would represent a stunning increase over the previous pace of the country's reserve draw down, which we began documenting mo... (more)
One of the main things that people usually bring up in defense of government is the idea that without the government there would not be any roads, or that the roads would somehow fall into disrepair. Well, it is not hard to tell these days that the infrastructure is falling apart, even with taxation at an all-time high. The government still isn't able to properly maintain roads and bridges.
In one Michigan community, people took these matters into their own hands instead of sittin... (more)
In the early days of capitalism there was a mass exodus from farm to factory. No one forced the masses to work in factories; they did so because factory work was better and more profitable than the alternative -- sixteen hours a day of backbreaking farm labor for less money. Or begging, prostitution, crime, and starvation. As Ludwig von Mises explained in Human Action (p. 615):
The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They
There is a growing sense across the financial spectrum that the world is about to turn some type of economic page. Unfortunately no one in the mainstream is too sure what the last chapter was about, and fewer still have any clue as to what the next chapter will bring. There is some agreement however, that the age of ever easing monetary policy in the U.S. will be ending at the same time that the Chinese economy (that had powered the commodity and emerging market booms) will be finally running ou... (more)
I'm a lawyer, and I think legal licensing is an extraordinary scam. Let people choose an attorney, paralegal, legal secretary, or self-educated legal savant to help with their legal problem. Legal licensure is designed to protect lawyers more than consumers.
Attorneys aren't the only professionals who rig regulation to their benefit. More than 1,100 professions are licensed by at least one state. In addition to lawyers and doctors are locksmiths, interior decorators, funeral atten... (more)
Whenever Venezuela comes up in the news the story is rarely good. From massive civil unrest, to rampant shortages, to hyper-inflation, to stories of squatters, the country is probably not on the top of many people's "places I'd like to visit" list.
While we may look at the situation in Venezuela and think, "wow, living there would be awful," the fact of the matter is that these conditions are reality for more than 30 million people who call the country home.
