Last week, the Federal Reserve responded to Wall Street’s coronavirus panic with an “emergency” interest rate cut. This emergency cut failed to revive the stock market, leading to predictions that the Fed will again cut rates later this month.More rate cuts would drive interest rates to near, or even below, zero. Lowering interest rates punishes people for saving, thus encouraging consumers and businesses to spend every penny they make. This may give the economy a short-term boost. But, it...

In recent years, few stories have generated as much outrage in the West as the condition of Uyghur Muslims in China. Reporting on the issue is typically represented through seemingly spontaneous leaks of information and expressions of resistance by Uyghur human rights activists struggling to be heard against a tyrannical Chinese government. True or not, nearly everything that appears in Western media accounts of China’s Uyghur Muslims is the product of a carefully conceived media campaign...

The US embargo on Cuba has been in effect for 60 years. It’s time to end it. The embargo makes it a criminal offense for any American to spend money in Cuba or to do business in Cuba. If an American travels to Cuba and spends money there or does business there, he is subject to criminal prosecution, conviction, fine, and imprisonment by his own government upon his return to the United States. The purpose of the embargo is regime change. The idea is to squeeze the Cuban people economically with...

This week’s meeting between Presidents Putin and Erdogan in Moscow was cast as preventing a war between Russia and Turkey in Syria. War, however, was never on the horizon. Putin called Erdogan’s bluff, and the Turk folded. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, accompanied by their respective senior national security advisers, met in Moscow on March 5. The purpose of this emergency summit was to negotiate the terms of a ceasefire that would bring an end to heavy...

I’ve said some stupid things in my time, but up there with the best of them was a comment I uttered to my wife on the morning of Tuesday 6th March 2018. The previous night the news had broken that an ex-spy by the name of Sergei Skripal had apparently been one of two people hospitalised on the Sunday afternoon on a bench in The Maltings in Salisbury. At that time the opioid, Fentanyl, was thought to be connected to it. Was this about to be a huge international story? Or was it going to soon be...

This article originally appeared as a special update to RPI subscribers. Subscribe for free here.I hesitate to write this, as I am a fan of the Libertarian Institute. But one of their recent articles has me scratching my head. And though I have never named them before in a critical piece, I notice that one of my articles is linked in their article so I believe I should set the record straight because the topic is so critically important to our movement. The article in question, "The Quincy...

“If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.” —Philip K. Dick Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized...

The seesaw events of the last few days can be examined from the political dancing and posturing of the major players and from the combatants’ maneuvers on the battlefield. Obviously there is a lot of interplay between the two, but I think it is the soldiers who are driving this train rather than the politicians. I'm also way more comfortable at the grazing fire level than wallowing among the political class. The SAA still is composed of a few well trained, well led and well equipped combined...

There are many influential supporters of nuclear war, and some of these contend that the use of "low-yield" and/or short-range weapons is practicable without the possibility of escalation to all-out Armageddon. In a way their argument is comparable to that of the band of starry-eyed optimists who thought, apparently seriously, that there could be such a beast as a "moderate rebel." In October 2013 the Washington Post reported that “The CIA is expanding a clandestine effort to train opposition...

Back in November 2019, former Bolivian President Evo Morales was ousted in a coup after claims of election fraud from the Organization for American States (OAS). A new MIT study into the October 20th presidential election does not support the conclusions of the OAS and casts further doubt on the already flimsy claims. Much damage has already been done, Morales fled the country, members of his Movimento al Socialismo (MAS) party have been arrested, and dozens of his supporters were shot and...

The 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act requires the Federal Reserve to “promote” stable prices and full employment. Of course, the Fed’s steady erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power has made prices anything but stable, while the boom-and-bust cycle created by the Fed ensures that periods of low unemployment will not last for long. Despite the difficulties the Fed faces fulfilling its “dual mandate,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently announced a new Fed mandate: to protect the financial...

When the Commander of NATO says he is a fan of flexible first strike at the same time that NATO is flexing its military muscle on Russia’s border, the risk of inadvertent nuclear war is real. US Air Force Gen. Tod D Wolters told the Senate this week he “is a fan of flexible first strike” regarding NATO’s nuclear weapons, thereby exposing the fatal fallacy of the alliance’s embrace of American nuclear deterrence policy.  It was one of the most remarkable yet underreported exchanges in recent...

Reckless claims by anonymous intelligence officials that Russia is “helping” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are deeply irresponsible. So was former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s calculated decision Tuesday to repeat this unsubstantiated accusation on the debate stage in South Carolina. Enough is enough. I am calling on all presidential candidates to stop playing these dangerous political games and immediately condemn any interference in our elections by out-of-control intelligence agencies. A...

Turkey is calling for NATO’s protection after 33 of its soldiers were killed in an apparent Syrian airstrike in Idlib, allegedly while fighting in terrorist ranks. In the regional chaos that ensues, only one player stands to gain. Speculation over what’s to come next has seen #article 5 trending on Twitter in the hours following the attacks, after Omer Celik, spokesman for Turkey’s ruling AKP party, indicated to reporters in Ankara that he was looking at requesting formal NATO protection...

Those hapless individuals who run the United States are again slipping into a fantasy world where Americans are besieged by imaginary threats coming from both inside and outside the country. Of course, it is particularly convenient to warn of foreign threats, as it makes the people in government seem relevant and needed, but one might recommend that the tune be changed as it is getting a bit boring. After all, there are only so many hours in the day and Russian President Vladimir Putin must...