Winter 2020 Lara-Murphy Report
In this final installment, Carlos explores the sinister role of the Rockefeller Foundation in global politics, and how Bill Gates has suddenly become a health authority.
2020 August Lara-Murphy Report
Why do the defenders of capitalism feel like they’re under a coordinated attack? Because they are.
2020 July Lara-Murphy Report
Why do the defenders of capitalism feel like they’re under coordinated attack? Because they are.
2020 June Lara-Murphy Report
One of the ironies in our current situation is that Carlos and I have been warning our subscribers for years that the various rounds of quantitative easing (QE) had blown up a giant asset bubble that would eventually burst, and that the fallout would be even worse than what happened in the fall of 2008. Well, that did happen, but there was the whole global pandemic thrown into the mix. Consequently, it’s hard to know how Austrian business cycle theory interacts with the coronavirus itself and the associated lockdowns.
2020 May Lara-Murphy Report
Even if the virus dies away, large sectors of the economy are already pulverized.
2020 April Lara-Murphy Report
Major Firms Less Liquid Than a Responsible Household
Standard financial planning recommends that a typical middle-class (or wealthier) household have at least 6 months’ worth of expenses available in very liquid funds (“cash in the bank”), to handle a sudden job loss, injury, or illness. And yet, when the coronavirus crisis struck, we saw not only small businesses but even many major firms brought to their knees because they couldn’t handle even a temporary interruption in their revenue streams.
2019 November Lara-Murphy Report
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has been throwing out so many ludicrous campaign promises that she makes Andrew Yang—the guy literally trying to send everyone a monthly check from Uncle Sam—look reasonable in comparison. Recently, in order to explain how she’d pay for her $52 trillion (over ten years) “Medicare for All” program, Warren doubled her proposed wealth tax on billionaires, from the original 3% now up to 6%.
To repeat, this is an annual tax on wealth, not on income.
2019 October Lara-Murphy Report
Just when you think that you have learned all of the possible strategies associated with Nelson Nash’s Infinite Banking Concept (IBC), up pops a brand new one. New, that is, but only to all those who have never realized the various opportunities found in practicing IBC as your very own banking system, especially at tax time. But now the latest window of unrecognized opportunity for IBC has surfaced in the area of charitable giving. According to recent publications charitable dollars have dropped significantly under the new tax law.
2019 August & September Lara-Murphy Report
CLIMATE HYSTERIA: FACT VS. FICTION BY Robert P. Murphy
Despite their claims of just reporting on the science, the radical environmentalists don’t have the facts on their side. One of the big stories this month was “Climate Week” (September 24-30), and in particular the passionate testimony of sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg before the UN, in which she famously exclaimed, “How dare you!” to the adults who were allegedly ruining her future. Another related item was the tragic death in late August of economist Martin Weitzman, which shone a spotlight on his technical work showing the limitations of conventional models in handling catastrophic risk scenarios.
2019 July Lara-Murphy Report
On the last day of July, the Federal Reserve announced that it would be cutting its target for the federal funds rate, and it also moved up the termination of its balance sheet runoff. The move signals a fairly abrupt departure from the Fed’s official outlook from just a year ago, even though the underlying fundamentals have not significantly changed in the interim. Many observers have attributed the shift in Fed policy to Trump, either through his intimidation of Powell or because his antics with China could lead to a trade war (and hence require a shot in the arm to the economy). Either way, the Fed’s announcement does not bode well for the long-term health of the economy.