Peter’s Blog

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the Oval Office, his proposed trade policies have reignited concerns about the economic impact of tariffs on American consumers. Trump has vowed to impose sweeping tariffs of up to 20% on all imports and a staggering 60% on Chinese goods. While he claims these measures will stimulate […]

America’s healthcare system is at a crossroads. Despite repeated promises from elected officials to rein in costs, healthcare spending in the United States continues to increase at an alarming rate. In 2022, the U.S. devoted 17.3% of its GDP to health expenditures, nearly 40% more than Germany, the next highest-spending G-7 country. This excessive spending […]

While it was once verboten to imply that the Fed is anywhere near being a private for-profit corporation, and doing so would immediately (and absurdly) cause you to be labeled some kind of whacko conspiracist, even the Fed itself has been forced to admit that it is, at least in part, a cartel of private […]

In a world where all it takes is a single click to spread falsehoods, our ability to trust the information that underpins our democracy has reached a dangerously low point.

A new army is marching for the front lines of the Ukraine war. Though they are dressed in Russian uniforms, these soldiers are half a world away from their homes. Five thousand miles from their position, in Pyongyang, North Korea, a dictator is directing their movements, ordering his men into a conflict that is now […]

“The Fed’s modern statutory mandate, as described in the 1977 amendment to the Federal Reserve Act, is to promote maximum employment and stable prices.” These two requirements are commonly known as the dual mandate. These two requirements have arisen from the unique power that the US Fed has in comparison to most other central banks. […]

The halls of power are spooky indeed, for every new president enters a White House occupied for over a century by the ghoulish apparitions of the Federal Reserve. This unnerving reality is manifested in every administration, as bankers both past and present manipulate reality with the spells of interest rates, sprinkling the same old hemlock […]

While the upcoming election has people discussing policy, and economic policy in particular, we rarely ask the question of whether we need economic policy in general. I’m being facetious here, however, the reach of economic policy that we employ and are attempting to enact in the future must be questioned. Rather than questioning any specific […]

Central banks typically make decisions based upon the NK (New Keynesian) model. Its goal is to provide a framework to understand how interest rate decisions end up affecting the various measures of an economy’s performance. It differs primarily from the RBC and Neoclassical models in that it includes the real short term effects of monetary […]

What if the key to solving our urban crises, such as housing shortages, traffic congestion, and wealth inequality, lies not in more government intervention, but in the principles of free-market economics? Market urbanism offers a bold vision for our cities, one that harnesses competition and individual choice to create livable, thriving environments. As traditional planning […]