John A. Parnell, Ph.D.
There are two spins you’re guaranteed to hear from the left every election, and this year is no exception. They sound plausible to the casual voter, but can be rejected easily with some critical thinking. The first one is all too familiar: “[Insert Republican] wants to cut Grandma’s social security…” The pundit or campaign ad […]
Read MoreJuan Williams has been my favorite liberal for some time. I usually disagree with him, but he’s intellectually honest, passionate, well-informed, and demonstrates genuine good will and common decency. Williams was finally bitten by the political correctness he hesitated to confront while at NPR. His dispatch–including the snide comments about his psychiatrist–are indicative of the left’s subtle yet constant effort to chip away at free thought and […]
Read MoreEverywhere I turn I hear more calls for “action” and “leadership” to “get the economy back on track.” I recently addressed the folly of desperate stimulus spending. Now I’m hearing demands for even more intervention from the Federal Reserve. It’s time to go over the problem with the Fed’s attempted management of the economy one […]
Read MoreThe most interesting souvenir I picked up while in Beijing last month was a t-shirt. It only cost me about $3, but the underlying message is priceless. Mao souvenirs are common in China. One popular t-shirt has a caricature of the former leader with a quote below, “Serve the people…Mao Zedong.” An Obama version of […]
Read MoreThere’s been some renewed talk about a one-world currency over the past few weeks. Ideally, there should be a single world currency—gold. National currencies would simply equate to a given quantity. If each dollar was worth a certain amount of gold, then more dollars couldn’t be printed unless the gold existed to back them up. […]
Read MoreI just returned from a ten-day visit to Beijing, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the blog. It appears that the Chinese are weathering the economic slowdown fairly well. In the U.S., politicians on the left constantly meddle with markets and expand the debt to buy votes, and the consequences have been […]
Read MorePresident Obama has been talking business tax cuts as of late, prompting some Republicans to question why their similar proposals have been ignored. The summer recovery never materialized and the Democrats are sliding in the polls, so the political explanation for this change of tune is not very difficult to understand. But I’m a little […]
Read MoreI’ve been rereading F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom lately. I count Hayek as one of the most brilliant economists of the last century. If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. If you have, considering reading it again. Hayek was a great writer, and some of the quotations from the book just […]
Read MoreHenry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson is one of the best primers in the discipline. The test of any work in economics is the test of time, and Hazlitt passes with flying colors. The latest example is Washington’s’ “reigning in” of the credit card companies. Congress passed and Obama signed the so-called Credit Card Accountability […]
Read MoreEd Whitacre surprised the business world on Thursday when he announced that he would step down as GM’s CEO on September 1 and as Chairman of the Board at the end of the year. Whitacre became Chairman when GM emerged from bankruptcy protection in July 2009 and was officially named as its CEO in January […]
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