“During a January 2026 interview with The New York Times, President Donald Trump was asked whether anything could limit his ability to use the vast military and economic power of the United States as he saw fit. His answer was breathtakingly candid. Trump replied, ‘Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.’ … Morally, a leader claiming to be constrained only by his personal sense of right and wrong should alarm anyone who values the rule of law. But a far more concrete problem exists: the perspective reflects a misunderstanding — or willful rejection — of the constitutional design of the American republic. The U.S. Constitution was deliberately constructed to prevent the very scenario Trump describes, that of a single individual unilaterally dragging the nation into conflict.” (01/14/26)
“It is safe to say that Trump’s abuse of the pardon power has no parallel in American history. Almost every president has granted a few that seem dodgy in retrospect; many have used them as an instrument of partisan politics; a few have used them as instruments of corruption. But in extent and scale, Trump’s pardons fall well below the subterranean ethical floor established even over the past 50 years. In pardoning 1,500 rioters convicted of involvement in the January 6 insurrection, Trump showed contempt for the law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol, and the system of government they preserved. His other pardons, from crypto fraudsters to foreign drug lords, reek with contempt for the very idea of law.” (01/14/26)
“It is almost impossible to get serious criticism of the Israeli state, which (falsely) claims to represent the Jewish people, anywhere near mainstream US culture, even when it takes the form of a critically acclaimed movie, backed by Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix, that received a record 23-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. For decades, pro-Israel lobby groups have dedicated their efforts to telling us that antisemitism is rampant across the West and takes the form of opposition of Israel – a message endlessly amplified by the western media. … The solution, it hardly needs pointing out, is to shut down criticism of Israel to reduce antisemitism.” (01/14/26)
“Donald Trump is trying to erase the 20th century. For those of you too young to remember back that far, he is also going after what we’ve gone through in the past two and a half decades as well. With a thoroughness that is surprising for a man who barely seems to know where he is at any given moment, Trump is rapidly eliminating many of the United States’[s] most important accomplishments during the period that marked our rise as a superpower. It is almost as if he wishes to reverse that rise.” (01/13/26)
“From defense contracting and mortgage finance to credit, housing, and monetary policy, Trump is leaning heavily on command-and-control economics.” (01/13/26)
“Net Present Value (NPV) is a popular decision-making criteria used by firms to make key, crucial choices about how to allocate resources across an economy. Net Present Value forecasts temporally discount future cash flows to their present value to check whether a project creates value. If a project has an NPV greater than zero, it creates value. On the other hand, if a project has an NPV less than zero, the project loses value. NPV forecasting isn’t perfect and there are often assumptions baked into any forecast but there is one particular type of error that occurs most often and has disastrous consequences.” (01/13/26)
“Democratic Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is focusing on affordability. But his ‘free stuff’ policy agenda would flunk an introductory economics midterm. For example: free bus rides will increase demand and cause overcrowding as service deteriorates. Can you envision New Yorkers queuing up like Londoners? Ditto free childcare, with risk of fraud. Ditto rent freezes, which are not likely to spur a rent-relieving housing supply surge. Does Mamdani really think public employees will work the same long, intense hours at city-owned grocery stores that private-sector owners do to earn a living while building their generational wealth? Or that it’s a good idea to shutter natural gas plants supplying 500 megawatts of reliable energy, which New York’s Independent System Operator extended beyond their planned retirement in mid-2025 lest the city suffer blackouts.” (01/14/25)
“According to the leader of the monetarists school Milton Friedman our knowledge of the world of economics is elusive. Consequently, it does not really matter what the underlying assumptions of a theory employed to ascertain the facts of reality are. In fact, anything goes, as long as the theory can yield good predictions. Again, on this way of thinking any theory that is applied on historical data could be valid as long as it could produce accurate predictions. … Experience of economic history is always the experience of complex phenomena. It can never convey knowledge of the kind the experimenter abstracts from a laboratory experiment. Moreover, It is vain to search for coefficients of correlation if one does not start from a theoretical insight acquired beforehand.” (01/13/26)
“The U.S. economy, after a tumultuous year of tariffs and trade wars, appears to have performed better than feared earlier in the year, with annual GDP growth through the third quarter of about 2 percent, including a surprisingly healthy bump in the last reported quarter. But that, contrary to what U.S. President Donald Trump says, is not because of tariffs but in spite of them. And 2026 looks set to be an even rockier year on the trade front, with further negative implications for U.S. economic performance.” (01/13/26)
