Peter's Blog

Treasury Secretary Bessent recently expressed displeasure with the Fed, implying that he’s interested in investigating whether or not the Fed is successful in promoting price stability. If Bessent digs deep enough, he’ll realize that the Fed has been both utterly unsuccessful and damaging to the economy.

While some still cling to the idea that economic and governmental development of Third World countries will come from external forces, it is becoming a much more widely accepted truth that the most robust long-term growth only comes when it is spurred by the countries themselves. Even when resources come from other countries, a great […]

Even free of outside interest, the government would still create inefficiencies and have numerous conflicts of interest, but a recurring core of over regulation and poor governmental choices is interference by businesses. While there are many legal paths to this, they most often end very poorly for both citizens and most businesses. Business interference in […]

Gold prices refused to budge much last week, with the LBMA Gold Price PM settling Friday at $3,344 per ounce—just 0.3 percent below the prior close. That leaves the metal up a dazzling 28.6 percent year-to-date, still among 2025’s best-performing assets despite a flurry of trade headlines and political theatrics. Early gains driven by tariff […]

Trump has repeatedly pressured Powell to lower interest rates, thinking that a spiral of Keynesian growth can undo the damage he has wrought with tariffs and one of the most hands on governments economically in recent memory. Let alone the theoretical weakness of Trump’s stands, he is viewing the Fed in an unprecedented yet still […]

The once-red-hot U.S. labor market is cooling at the edges. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released July 29, shows total openings falling to 7.4 million in June—a 4.4 percent openings rate. Hiring was flat at 5.2 million, while total separations came in slightly lower at 5.1 million. […]

The CME Comex is the Exchange where futures are traded for gold, silver, and other commodities. The CME also allows futures buyers to turn their contracts into physical metal through delivery. You can find more detail on the CME here (e.g., vault types, major/minor months, delivery explanation, historical data, etc.).

City planning is a task that is often seen as a unique realm of governmental necessity. The existence of externalities means that the market could create extremely sub optimal outcomes when creating a city. For example, a house with a messy front yard hurts everyone, but the people in this house might have little incentive […]

July’s advance purchasing-manager numbers paint a tale of two economies. The S&P Global Flash U.S. Composite PMI jumped to 54.6—its best showing in seven months—thanks almost entirely to a roaring service sector that notched a 55.2 reading. Manufacturing, by contrast, slipped back into contraction territory at 49.5, a full three points below Wall Street’s consensus […]

President Trump’s insistence on lowering interest rates serves only the ever-growing spending state. Lower interest rates may relieve some price pressure in the housing market, but printing money is only going to make things worse in the long run.