Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Douglas E French
“In the real world, where people actually buy things, those who can, dictate what currency they wish to be paid in. … Singer Bette Midler (influenced by manager Aaron Russo) insisted on payment in gold bullion for a planned British concert tour in the fall of 1978. The ‘Divine Miss M’ is believed to be the first major performer to be paid in bullion. … Fast forward to 2026. Wasteland Capital posted on X, ‘The big news from Davos is that the luxury hookers have stopped accepting Bitcoin but are happy to take Gold bars and DRAM sticks.'” (02/10/26)
“We live in large-scale political communities that have delivered unprecedented levels of peace, freedom, and prosperity to vast numbers of human beings. At the same time, modern science and technology have generated comforts, useful tools, and remedies for illnesses that would have been unthinkable to our ancestors. But the Enlightenment promised more than this. As the name itself implies, the thinkers of the Enlightenment believed that it was both possible and desirable to popularize reason and science and to establish self-governing societies that administer their affairs on the basis of reason. This promise seems not to have been fully realized.” (02/10/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jake Scott
“Since the end of January and into the beginning of February this year, the prices of gold and silver have fluctuated drastically. So much so that there is a good chance the price will have changed before I finish writing this article, never mind before it is published. Even so, this has not stopped various diagnoses of gold and silver as more stable, less stable, worth investing in, avoiding at all costs … The volatility that gold and silver have seen in the opening weeks of 2026 both mask and reveal a long-term trend in their increased valuation: it masks the fact that both are significantly more sought-after than they were a year ago, yet it reveals that the strategy of precious metals as a backstop against global instability is not immune to market hysteria.” (02/10/26)
“In the aftermath of the big layoffs at The Washington Post, there has been an explosion of commentary — again — about the decline and often the death of newspapers. But if you are reading this, it came to your attention via some means other than a subscription to a legacy newspaper. And there, in a sentence, is the dilemma for legacy ‘news,’ and indeed any written product for which a reader has to pay: There is so much ‘free’ content that it is very, very difficult for a high-overhead text product that depends on subscriptions to succeed. By ‘succeed,’ I mean at least break even.” (02/10/26)
“If you wanted to bet on the Super Bowl this past weekend, you had options. You may have bet with a friend. If you live in a state where it’s legal, you could have gone to a casino or used a casino’s app. Or, starting last year, you could have entered into an event contract using a Designated Contract Market regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). This is the same legal structure you would use to buy derivatives on the prices of traditional commodities like wheat, coffee, or pork bellies, now applied to trades like whether the Patriots will beat the Seahawks and what song will be played first at halftime. … As a bettor, I’m happy to see alternatives to the high-fee monopoly casino. As an economist, though, I worry.” (02/10/26)
Source: National Priorities Project
Lindsay Koshgarian
“This week, members of Congress are negotiating funding levels for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, after public opposition soared when federal agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. As of January 25, ICE held more than 70,000 people in detention, and claimed more than 352,000 deportations. In 2025, at least 32 people died in ICE custody, and so far in 2026, at least eight people have died in the custody or at the hands of ICE and CBP ….ICE is now holding an average of 170 children in detention each day. They can do all of this because ICE and CBP are flush with money from last year’s Big Ugly Bill that stripped health insurance and food assistance from Americans while padding the budgets of ICE, CBP, and the Pentagon.” (02/10/25)
“After President Donald Trump’s first year back in office — marked by battered institutions, executive overreach and contempt for basic constraints on presidential power — Democrats would be wise to unify around an alternative message rooted in competence, restraint, affordability and institutional repair. There is no shortage of voters uneasy with Trump’s behavior and eager for a credible counterweight. And yet, the party’s loudest message is an aggressive push for confiscation camouflaged by the rhetoric of moral clarity and fiscal responsibility. Democrats may have something to offer to voters caught in the middle, but how many will notice with large states like New York, Virginia and California pushing to punish the wealthy?” (02/10/26)
“Tariffs and other trade barriers hampered the free flow of goods and services and investments across political boundary lines around the world after 1945. However, they almost seem mild and ‘enlightened’ compared to the current crop of protectionist weeds and their policy effects, particularly over the past year during Donald Trump’s second presidency. With autocratic caprice, arrogance, crudeness, and rudeness, Trump has assumed the powers of a near absolute monarch to decide when, why, and against whom he will arbitrarily raise and lower and raise again tariffs on the importation of goods into the United States from all the other countries on the planet.” (02/10/26)
“How high is your risk of developing pancreatic cancer or suffering a heart attack in the next 20 years? A new generative artificial intelligence system called Delphi-2M aims to answer that question and offer personalized forecasts of your long-term health trajectory. Developed by a team of European biomedical researchers and detailed in a September 2025 Nature article, Delphi-2M represents one of the most ambitious efforts yet to apply AI to predictive medicine. Large language models (LLMs) that power chatbots such as ChatGPT trained on massive amounts of text data to predict the next word in a sentence. Delphi-2M trained on a vast amount of medical data to predict the next stage in a person’s health.” (02/26)
“Yes, there is. You might have to look hard to find it, but it’s there. Actually, the best news is right before our eyes, but most people refuse to look at it. I confess, as I have before, to being a bit of a cynic (no, a lot of a cynic, not terribly optimistic). That may partly come from the clinical depression I fight every day of my life, but it also comes from history, Bible study, and current events. How can a person not be somewhat of a cynic when viewing the modern, evil, putrid Democratic Party? I look at the NFL now and want to barf; I used to be a devoted fan of the league, but then they left me with their woke, racist, anti-American, promiscuous-promoting pig slop, and I haven’t watched an NFL game in years (or MLB or NBA, either).” (02/10/25)
