Peter's Blog

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) on Tuesday, and the report offered little new for markets to digest. Total openings in May held at 7.6 million, hires came in at 5.2 million, and separations totaled 5.1 million. The underlying rates (openings at 4.6%, hiring at 3.3%, […]

The model of software-as-a-service is dead. Already successful businesses have been able to hold onto some of their past glory, but new SaaS businesses have it much more difficult than they did even five years ago. Businesses are tired of paying for tools that have potential to make them more efficient. People are ready to […]

The AI bubble has become a frequent fixture in the financial news cycle as pundits and institutions express their fear that, when it pops, it could drag the global economy into crisis. Central bankers and institutions like the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) are sounding alarms about debt-fueled AI investments, overexuberance, fragile funding structures, and […]

Nearly all read distributive forms of government try to find some way to give moral justification for their poor economic choices. They assume that it will be easier for people to accept wealth redistribution if they can somehow prove that the wealthy are morally inferior. While like any group of people the wealthy have their […]

People love to lie to themselves, particularly about themselves. This has been true throughout all of history, and it is now revealing itself to be even more true because of incredible material abundance and new technologies. Artificial intelligence is explicitly sycophantic, but there has always been a large market for things that can increase the […]

New York Federal Reserve President John Williams didn’t show up to Tuesday’s Crane’s Money Fund Symposium in person, but his prepared remarks got out anyway. Gold didn’t care either way. Williams described the U.S. economy as “resilient amid the uncertainty” from the Middle East conflict, pointing to steady consumer spending and “robust” artificial-intelligence investment. In […]

Democracy truly was not meant for us. Democracy was built for people that are so different from us that they would hardly recognize us or the form of government we have built on democratic principles. Democracy was meant to be governance of all by the free. In our society, except for circumstances of age or […]

Inflation benefits debtors at the expense of creditors, and there is no bigger debtor than the US government. By silently eroding the real value of its massive debt through currency debasement, inflation allows the government to avoid politically painful spending cuts or tax hikes. This explains why politicians like President Trump love inflation despite the […]

May’s economic data tells a story that sounds good on the surface but gets more complicated the closer you look. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its report Friday showing personal income climbed 0.7 percent last month, adding $181.6 billion, with disposable income rising by that same margin. Americans didn’t sit on that extra […]

China’s economic rise in recent decades has been nothing short of remarkable. Many attribute this success to the country’s ambitious industrial policy, which involves central planning and heavy government intervention in the economy. However, a closer look reveals that this approach leads to inefficiency and distortions that ultimately undermine economic progress. The following article was […]