Source: Cobden Centre
by Tim Price
“The chances are, if you speak to any financial adviser, they’ll tell you that asset allocation – how you divide up your investible pot among the major asset classes, including debt, equity, property, commodities and alternative investments – is the single most important investment decision you will make. And they’re right to do so.” (07/16/26)
https://www.cobdencentre.org/2026/07/how-to-avoid-the-crash/
Source: CounterPunch
by John Kendall Hawkins
“Terminator 2: Judgment Day gave us intelligence as hunter. Ex Machina gave us intelligence as deceiver. Transcendence gave us intelligence as god. Surveillance, then persuasion, then something close to apotheosis. The films did not plan this arc together, but placed end to end they map the territory we now live in with an accuracy that ought to make us uneasy.” (07/16/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/07/16/the-god-in-the-machine-comes-with-an-owner/
Source: Law & Liberty
by Dennis Wieboldt
“Conservatives in Washington now seek to leverage their newfound power over American higher education more decisively than ever before. But not-too-distant history reveals that reform efforts led principally by the executive branch may come with unintended consequences. Indeed, that is the lesson of one major clash involving race, religious liberty, and Bob Jones University that unfolded less than 50 years ago before the US Supreme Court. By recalling the circumstances under which Bob Jones University v. United States reached the Court, both conservatives and progressives will find lessons about the perils that accompany the aggressive use of executive power to reform American colleges and universities.” (07/16/26)
Source: Townhall
by Mark Lewis
“Thomas Jefferson, as he nearly always did, nailed the point exactly. History shows that, as government grows, human liberty decreases. There is a metaphysical reason for this, and our Founders based the American system upon it. It runs like this. ‘People power’ is called liberty—the right to do what one wishes (in harmony with virtue and the laws of God). ‘Government power,’ when abused, is called tyranny. Government becomes necessary when people misuse their ‘power,’ their liberty, by living unvirtuous lives, which infringe on the rights of others. Thus, for that reason, government becomes necessary. But government power always limits somebody’s ‘liberty’—and again, sometimes, necessarily so.” (07/16/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Per Bylund
“A common but erroneous belief about entrepreneurship is that success is a property of the entrepreneurial idea itself. Sometimes described as an ‘opportunity’ that was out there waiting to be discovered and exploited, all it took for the successful entrepreneur was to come up with the ‘right’ idea at the right time. … Many of my students majoring in entrepreneurship suffer from believing in this myth: that it is the idea that makes the business and their success. Consequently, they seek that one great idea that will make them rich and successful. And when they find it, they therefore want to keep their idea secret and not tell anyone about it before launching the business. In stark contrast, practically all experienced entrepreneurs have the opposite view.” (07/16/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/entrepreneurship-requires-more-than-a-million-dollar-idea/
Source: Cato Institute
by Clark Packard
“A disclaimer up front: I am not a Russia specialist. I have no particular expertise on the war in Ukraine, and no informed view on whether another round of sanctions on Moscow is necessary, sufficient, or beside the point. But I do know something about what happens when Congress hands the executive branch, and President Trump in particular, unilateral and discretionary tariff authority. And the tariff title of the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026—the long-stalled package championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R‑SC), now backed by the White House and more than two dozen senators—deserves a hard look on those grounds alone.” (07/16/26)
https://www.cato.org/blog/congress-really-going-give-president-trump-new-tariff-powers
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Ruel Domi
“Americans are increasingly unable to afford housing. For many young people, the ‘American Dream’ seems out of reach. In moments of economic frustration, populists on both the Left and Right rush to identify villains. Left-wing populists like Zohran Mamdani, Hasan Piker, or Bernie Sanders, blame the very wealthy and cite rising wealth and income inequality as the reason why, for example, home prices have soared. Right-wing populists often blame immigrants, arguing that more people inevitably mean more expensive rents and higher home prices. What populists on both sides of the aisle refuse to grapple with—whether it’s due to ignorance or the need to feed their click-bait audiences with the usual outcasts to blame—is that excessive government intervention in markets is to blame for rising home prices.” (07/16/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/populism-will-not-solve-housing-affordability-crisis-markets-will
Source: In These Times
by Sonali Kolhatkar
“Within hours of federal immigration agents killing a 26-year-old man named Joan Sebastian Guerrero, in Biddeford, Maine, hundreds protested in the streets of the small town demanding answers. Just days earlier, ICE agents shot and killed a 52-year-old man named Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, in Houston, Texas, also sparking protest. Although seemingly disparate — one in a small town in the nation’s whitest state, and the other in a large, cosmopolitan city in one of the most populous states — the two killings have a common throughline: both are the result of an officially-sanctioned imperative to hunt down and hurt people who Donald Trump’s administration and the Republican Party have deemed enemies. … But most Americans aren’t falling for it. From Maine to Texas, Wisconsin to California, North Carolina to Minnesota, communities are organizing and fighting back against the most well-funded police institution in history.” (07/16/26)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-people-fighting-back-inside-maines-immigrant-defense-movement
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Gary W Houchens
“Every July 4th, Americans light fireworks, wave flags, and sing songs. This year, we do all of that and more: the nation turns 250, a milestone grand enough to demand something beyond the usual celebrations. So here is a question worth sitting with this weekend: What holds us together? Not what should hold us together in theory, but what actually does. What shared inheritance, what common story, what sense of mutual obligation binds 340 million people into something we can still honestly call one nation? Our national motto offers a clue, and a challenge.” (07/16/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Joe Tabor
“Illinois lawmakers finally passed legislation to become the last state in the country to comply with a three-year-old US Supreme Court ruling. State law allows the government to take an entire property for unpaid property taxes, even when they’re much less than the value of the property. House Bill 4537 brings the state into compliance with the 2023 high court decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County, which ruled that in taking property, state governments must give owners the value that exceeds the amount owed in taxes.” (07/16/26)
https://fee.org/articles/illinois-lawmakers-finally-pass-bill-to-end-home-equity-theft/