Maybe the Fed Too Was Trolled
The Federal Reserve – and central banks the world over – played a crucial role in making lockdowns possible and weaponizing…
The Book We Need and Only Justin Hart Could Write
Sometimes, even now, even after writing a book and probably a thousand or more articles on the topic, and following…
Remember Those Who Cannot Speak
Being on the administrative/editorial side of Brownstone has been a serious education in information systems. I don’t mean on a…
Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word
It’s been more than obvious since April 2020 that lockdowns were far too costly for individuals and society and could…
The Economic Disaster of the Pandemic Response
On April 15, 2020, a full month after the President’s fateful news conference that greenlighted lockdowns to be enacted by…
But Will Elections Change Anything?
It’s coming up in a fortnight. For many people, all their hopes rest on the outcome. I get it because…
Why Your Mask Came from China
Starting in 2018, President Trump imposed tariffs on trade with China. It was an unusual approach by any postwar standard.…
A Nobel Prize for Moral Hazard
Our times are stuffed with daily ironies all pointing to the same grim reality: the failure of experts, particularly those…
Why Did So Many Intellectuals Refuse to Speak Out?
Think of all the institutions that have marched in lockstep during the dramatic decline in civilization over three years. It’s…
The 70 Seconds that Shook the World
On March 16, 2020, following a long weekend of negotiations and deals about the coronavirus, Donald Trump, Deborah Birx, and…
The Pandemic Response Unleashed Two Kinds of Nationalism
Sunetra Gupta became my whisperer early in the pandemic due to her comprehensive understanding of the relationship between society and…
When Did Trump Change His Mind about Lockdowns?
All sources we have so far testify that Trump greenlighted nationwide lockdowns the weekend of March 14-15, 2020, under the…
The Choice Is Liberty or Lockdown
Two years after the first edition, the second edition of Liberty or Lockdown is now in print, just as the…
The Market Still Loves You
This book – The Market Loves You, now it is second edition – was written in the Before Times. Looking back through…
It Ends as it Began: As a Political Ploy
The current US president finally said it during a 60 Minutes interview: “The pandemic is over.” Though obviously true by…
Governor Andrew Cuomo: From Hero to Goofball in One Seasonal Virus
Oh joy, another book by a hero of lockdowns! This time it is from Andrew Cuomo, who rode the disease-panic…
The Story of Jared Kushner and His Ventilators
You know the phrase self-aware? It does not apply to Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law. He somehow winnowed his…
A World on Fire
Every day, news reporters, traders, and workers of all sorts the world over wake to do their work as they…
Judge Orders Fauci to Cough It Up
A lawsuit against the federal government – Anthony Fauci in particular – from the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana has…
Frankenstein Was the Foreshadowing
Two years before lockdowns, the world celebrated the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein, about which a wonderful movie…
The Return of Carl Schmitt and His Scheme for Regime Longevity
The message and optics of Joe Biden’s address from September 1, 2022, were startling in our supposedly enlightened times. In…
Cold War Nostalgia Explained
The death of Mikhail Gorbachev this week unleashed a wave of nostalgia for simpler and better times. That’s odd, isn’t…
US Life Expectancy Down Three Years in Two Years
Jared Kushner had not yet read the news most likely. He was just telling an interviewer that he is working…
Social Distancing Was Supposed to Be Forever
By April 2020, two months into the lockdowns, eminent Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben had put his finger on a point…
Moderna and Pfizer: Cat Fight!
The legend is that patents are a just reward for new inventions. The reality is that they are government grants…
Jared Kushner and the Mystery of the First US Lockdown
The possibility of US lockdowns – never attempted on this scale in the history of pandemics – was already in…
How Could We Have Been So Naive about Big Tech?
The 1998 movie Enemy of the State starring Gene Hackman and Will Smith seemed like fiction at the time. Why…
How To Tame a Bureaucracy? Get Rid of It
Any serious effort to end the crisis must deal with the problem of the administrative state and the bureaucratic power…
The CDC Failed, So Spin It Off and Make It More Powerful?
The failure of the CDC to manage Covid-19 was baked in from the first moments of its response. A government…
A Deeper Dive Into the CDC Reversal
It was a good but bizarre day when the CDC finally reversed itself fundamentally on its messaging for two-and-a-half years.…