People who are thinking of their personal and professional lives as in conflict with each other are thinking as man sees, not as God does. At some point ten years ago or so, a client asked if I would offer a little career advice to their son. He was 21 years old, bright, about to graduate from a good college in a big city, and ...

The bank resisted my shareholder resolution but accepted some proposed by the left. Left-wing activists have been harassing corporate America with demands for more diversity and inclusion in the boardroom and among their employees. That’s a fine goal, but the left’s demands are becoming more militant. The activism is distracting companies ...

A Fed-driven world of zero interest rates enabled the troubled bank’s dangerous business model. The fall of Silicon Valley Bank should not be minimized, even by those of us who believe contagion will prove limited or nonexistent. Idiosyncratic events like this still have knock-on effects. There are parts of what has happened to Silicon Valley ...

The share of working-age adults participating in the labor force tells us more about the economy and our culture than ever before. The labor-market data revealed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics the first Friday of each month has become a sort of blood-sport for both political junkies and market watchers. The political angle is easy to discern ...

One does not have to search hard to find examples where basic economic ignorance is doing great damage to society. As long as we've had the Republic we have had political disagreements, but often it seems we are not debating about a difference of opinion in policy, as much as debating without a foundation of economic truth. Even with ...

Today's Capital Record episode with guest Aswath Damodoran helps explain the emptiness of ESG. Few institutions on the right have been as committed to exposing the danger of the modern ESG movement as National Review Capital Matters. In fact, today's episode of the Capital Record features my interview with Aswath Damodoran, a leading academic ...

We need clarity about what’s causing inflation, why it’s a problem, and what should be done about it. The inflation levels of the last year are stuck around President Biden’s neck like a tight noose and, if the current polling is any indication, will likely be a major problem for Democrats in the 2022 midterms. The politicization of inflation ...

While some of us have been pleading for a long time for the most resourced and capable businesses in the world to show they care about social responsibility by bringing their workers back to the office, the topic has suddenly crossed partisan lines and gained momentum. Whether it is New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, or Chicago Mayor, ...

A multi-dimensional assault on American ideals will require an intellectual and multi-dimensional defense. When National Review Institute first became inspired to launch its National Review Capital Matters endeavors — a vigorous and serious defense of the free enterprise system and the financial markets that undergird it — I knew that many ...

We care about economic growth because we care for the human person, and the human person can flourish when they are free to grow and prosper. One of the challenges in understanding economics, or for that matter, teaching it, is first defining it. There are all sorts of subjects and disciplines where intelligent men and women disagree ...

David is joined this week on Capital Record by Rob Arnott, the founder and chairman of Research Affiliates, a global asset manager advising on $166 billion of global capital. Rob and David discuss the unique components of fundamental analysis involved in a discerning approach to capital risk and reward, but also dive head first into a range ...

We must capably defend the call of the entrepreneur, the vitality of capital markets, and the nobility of free enterprise. Somehow I doubt even Bill Buckley could have predicted that "standing athwart history, yelling stop" would have meant, in 2020, an actual plea in the United States of America to repudiate the failed and catastrophic ...

Silly debates over whether emergency credit-facility programs should be allowed to expire — they should — distract from a more important question. On Thursday, Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin sent a coherent and benign letter to Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell that made the case for bringing some of the emergency credit ...

Where we go from here. Perhaps the most commonly expressed take on stock market performance in recent months is shock at how the market has performed given the state of the “real economy.” For others, disgust is a better word — believing somehow that this market pricing in the face of double-digit unemployment and an economy not even ...

Neel Kashkari’s call for nationwide lockdown is counterproductive. When Fed officials make policy pronouncements on non-financial matters on which they have no expertise or authority, everyone loses. I am happy to engage in constructive dialogue over what “aggressive” or “experimental” monetary policies are and are not appropriate from the ...

The Dodd–Frank bill passed in 2010 in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, in which the major commercial and investment banks were ground zero. The banks were the major lenders and mortgage originators in the housing crisis; their balance sheets were riddled with the toxic assets; they were each other’s counter parties in a slew ...

The question of herd immunity is one among the many issues running throughout the debate over the response to COVID-19 for months now. The data in London, Stockholm, and New York City all have something profound in common: Prevalence of cases reaching or exceeding 20 percent seems to lead to significant burn-out in rapid order, in very ...

The downside of low interest rates is hard to see, but dangerous nonetheless. It is difficult to argue for sound money and price discovery these days. Even occasional Fed critics like myself have defended the use of aggressive monetary accommodation to deal with the realities of a COVID economy. The “no atheists in foxholes” principle is alive ...

We must be careful that the central bank’s drastic, necessary response to the current crisis doesn’t become an unsustainable new normal. Ramesh Ponnuru, as usual, hit the nail on the head in his recent piece addressing the monumental task faced by the Federal Reserve, which must now prepare the economy to recover once the coronavirus crisis ...

It will reduce growth and take money from middle-class investors. Congressmen Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Peter DeFazio of Oregon have introduced the Wall Street Tax Act, a crass and poorly constructed tax on financial transactions. More specifically, the bill aims to charge a 10-basis-point (0.1 percent) fee on all financial transactions ...