During last year’s Republican National Convention, South Carolina GOP leaders were regularly calling in to WTMA talk radio in Charleston to provide event coverage. On the day they were supposed to talk to me, I was informed that Republican Party officials did not wish to speak to Jack Hunter. In denouncing big government and all its works, I never saw any … [Read More]

The GDP numbers out yesterday, which showed economic growth at 3.5% in the third quarter, brought a deafening chorus from public and private economists who all agreed that the recession is officially over. With such a strong report, they are happy to tell us that not only has the Fat Lady finished her aria, but she has left the building and … [Read More]

Evidence that the U.S. is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it. One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and advance their private interests. Another conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality, as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of … [Read More]

For the most part, the value of the dollar is given cursory attention by the financial media. Typically, its movements are assigned an importance on par with much less determinative metrics such as natural gas futures and construction permits. It’s only when major milestones are reached that anyone really takes notice of the dollar. We are living through one of those … [Read More]

The U.S. has every characteristic of a failed state. The U.S. government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation. Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the U.S. relies on terrorism and military aggression. Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at … [Read More]

While all the talk at present is about economic corners turned and markets charging ahead, no one is paying much notice to an American economy deteriorating before our eyes. These myopic commentators seem to be simply moving past the now almost universally held conclusion that before the crash of 2008, our economy was on an unsustainable course. If these imbalances had … [Read More]

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. —Karl Marx If Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics. Marx predicted the growing misery of working people, and Lenin foresaw the subordination of the production of goods … [Read More]

For those market boosters who are prattling on about the possibility of a “jobless recovery,” I offer an invitation to join me for a breakfast of “fat-free bacon,” “eggless omelets,” and “no-carb bread.” As unappetizing as such a meal may sound, it would nevertheless offer more substance than the oxymoronic concept of an economic resurgence without job creation. Those who do … [Read More]

Americans cannot get any truth out of their government about anything, the economy included. Americans are being driven into the ground economically, with 1 million schoolchildren now homeless, while Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announces that the recession is over. The spin that masquerades as news is becoming more delusional. Consumer spending is 70 percent of the U.S. economy. It is … [Read More]

As we pass the one year anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers, journalists, politicians and market analysts have seized on the occasion to offer seemingly sober assessments of what went wrong and what went right in the lead up and aftermath of the biggest financial event since Black Tuesday. The most popular storyline offered by these Monday morning quarterbacks is … [Read More]