John Tamny

John Tamny is director of the Center for Economic Freedom at FreedomWorks, a columnist for Forbes, and editor of RealClearMarkets.com. He is the author of Popular Economics (Regnery, 2015) and Who Needs the Fed? (Encounter, 2016).

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True Overlords Don’t Work This Hard

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In response to: The Frivolous Valley and Its Dreadful Conformity

Apple's Cupertino, California headquarters (image: Uladzik Kryhin / shutterstock.com)
It’s creative destruction that rules in Silicon Valley, not tech arrogance—and that’s a good thing.

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The Needs of a Nationalist-Populist Ideology

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Michael Anton has a fundamental problem with capitalism itself, and how it is practiced in 21st century America.

Nihilism, Active and Passive

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Michael Anton is right that our politics and culture will eventually “begin to draw blood” from the gods of entertainment in Silicon Valley.

Michael Anton’s Rejoinder: Dear Avengers of the Free Market . . .

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The techies want to reconstitute the ancien regime on silicon rather than soil. Tamny and Pethokoukis, whether they realize it or not, are helping.

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Bastiat, Common Sense Personified

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Fréderic Bastiat (1801-1850)

To read mainstream economics reporting regularly is to encounter one blood pressure-raising falsehood after another.

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What’s Wrong with Inequality?

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Entrepreneur Vision Concept

Do you, the reader, own any Apple products? Are there Dell computers in your office, or at home? Have you purchased anything on Amazon in the past month?

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What Will Donald Trump’s Presidency Mean for the Dollar?

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The world would be a much better place if economists, politicians and pundits had this line from Henry Hazlitt memorized: “What is harmful or disastrous to an individual must be equally harmful of disastrous to the collection of individuals that make up a nation.”

It’s arguably the most important line ever written in any economics book. Hazlitt (1894-1993) was making the essential point that an economy is not a living, breathing blob; rather it’s a collection of individuals.

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Fear Not, the Federal Reserve’s Relevance Is Declining by the Day

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“The sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods.” – Adam Smith

 

In a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Morgan Stanley economist Ruchir Sharma observed that while the world is seemingly “turning inward,” this comes “in a period when countries are more beholden than ever to one institution, the U.S. Federal Reserve.” Interesting about Sharma’s piece is that if anything, it revealed the Fed’s growing irrelevance.

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If We Love the Banks, We Must Love Them Enough to Let Them Fail

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Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Commenting on the health of big U.S. banks last week, former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke wrote on his Brookings blog that “a lot of progress has been made (and more is in train) toward reducing the risks that large, complex financial institutions pose for the financial system and the economy.” Bernanke’s observation came after Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari’s recent commentary about the need to reduce the alleged problem of “Too Big To Fail” within banking. Some readers could be excused for wondering why Bernanke would have any opinion on the matter at all.

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Beware of Nobel Laureates Bearing Snake Oil

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Suze Orman writes for an audience in search of investment advice and financial security, and her great success can be measured in numerous bestsellers. An Orman book sells really well because it properly makes simple what is simple: the common-sense path to financial health. Unsurprisingly, Orman doesn’t much excite economists, whose profession seems intent on turning human action into that which is bland and utterly incomprehensible. Economists “find her investment advice simplistic,” write George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, adding that “Our economist friends cannot stand [Orman’s] mommy-knows-best/I-told-you-to-do-that voice.” Yet their book Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception uses…

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Economics in One Popular Culture Lesson: A Discussion with John Tamny

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John Tamny comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his excellent new book Popular Economics. Many will recall the first time they read Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. That book’s clear prose and striking examples provided a foundational introduction to free markets. But, as is often true, our practices are better than our theories. We instinctively grasp economics in our daily habits and choices but misunderstand the conditions and principles that support economic growth. Americans are confused about inequality, trade deficits, antitrust policy, fiscal policy, minimum wage, job creation, etc, despite pursuing their own economic self-interest without much thought. Dispelling such…

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