Tag Archives: Economics/Finance

Oops!!

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Ron Unz - 679 Words

With all eyes and all headlines fixed so intently upon Boston’s two Caucasian Bombers, hardly anyone has been paying attention to revelations of a far more devastating disaster that unfolded close nearby, but which were generally buried on the inside … Continue reading →

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A Minimum Wage Hike as Amnesty-Killer?

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Ron Unz - 1797 Words

My Friday Aspen Institute panel in DC on raising the minimum wage went well, though the discussion underscored the somewhat insular thinking of many of the policy elites who dominate life in our capital city. As an example, although the audience … Continue reading →

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Resurrecting Our Intellectual Past

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Ron Unz - 1254 Words

As many may know, I have spent most of the last decade or more producing a content-archiving website that provides convenient, readable access to over 500,000 print articles from the 19th and 20th centuries, together with hundreds of thousands of … Continue reading →

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Undoing the Minimization of Wages in America

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Ron Unz - 1466 Words

The front page of this morning’s New York Times carried a story highlighting the growing discontent of working-class Americans whose “wages have floundered” over the last few years despite the “record levels” of corporate profits. Although this discontent may seem somewhat … Continue reading →

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The Minimum Wage, Immigration, and Affirmative Action

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Ron Unz - 2207 Words

Earlier this week Washington Post Columnist Matt Miller published an excellent piece making the case for a large increase in the federal minimum wage, including arguments drawn from a wide range of prominent business and political figures, as well as … Continue reading →

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Unz on Meritocracy: Picking Our Elites at Random?

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Ron Unz - 2138 Words

Given the enormous length of my Meritocracy package—over 35,000 words including sidebar, endnotes, and appendices—it’s hardly surprising that certain parts have received a great deal of discussion, while others have not. For example, my suggestion that our top universities now … Continue reading →

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Paying Tuition to a Giant Hedge Fund

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Ron Unz - 1318 Words

Paying Tuition to a Giant Hedge Fund The American Conservative, December 2012 From its 1636 foundation Harvard had always ranked as America’s oldest and most prestigious college, even as it gradually grew in size and academic quality during the first … Continue reading →

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Raising American Wages…by Raising American Wages

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Ron Unz - 3729 Words

Raising American Wages…by Raising American Wages The New America Foundation, November 15, 2012 With Americans still trapped in the fifth year of our Great Recession, and median personal income having been essentially stagnant for forty years, perhaps we should finally … Continue reading →

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Unz on the Minimum Wage – Bloomberg Editors Say “Let’s Make a Deal…”

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Ron Unz - 1207 Words

With our chattering classes now totally focused on the overriding question of whether the political contributions of Romney’s Wall Street cronies or those of Obama will first reach the billion dollar mark, only a few scattered voices have focused on … Continue reading →

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Unz on Immigration – Politics and CNN/Fortune

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Ron Unz - 850 Words

As everyone is well aware, the last 72 hours have seen an astonishing transformation in the American political landscape, with a pugnacious Newt Gingrich coming from far behind to crush Mitt Romney in South Carolina, and now take a substantial … Continue reading →

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National Review on J.K. Galbraith on Unz on Immigration

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Ron Unz - 734 Words

Just a few days ago prominent liberal economist James K. Galbraith strongly endorsed the economic proposals at the heart of my recent immigration article, arguing they constituted the best chance for reviving the American economy. And now National Review’s leading … Continue reading →

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J.K. Galbraith on Unz on Immigration

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Ron Unz - 469 Words

My lengthy Fall cover article analyzing the politics and economics of immigration issues appears to be receiving a bit of renewed attention in somewhat unexpected quarters. The current issue of establishment-oriented Foreign Policy magazine carries a piece by prominent liberal … Continue reading →

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Unz on Immigration III – From Alex Cockburn to Steve Sailer, and Points Between

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Ron Unz - 813 Words

Eight or nine years ago, when our previous president began engaging in the sort of foreign policy endeavors which eventually reduced his popularity to perhaps the lowest ever recorded (and which have now naturally been continued by his successor), I … Continue reading →

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Unz on Immigration – A Five-Part Analysis by National Review

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Ron Unz - 677 Words

As the now-faltering presidential campaign of erstwhile GOP front-runner Gov. Rick Perry illustrates, the topic of immigration can be deadly for Republicans. The reason is quite simple: the party’s elites and its grassroots have diametrically opposed positions. For the business … Continue reading →

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Unz on Immigration – Liberal DC Pundit Denounces Minimum Wage on MSNBC

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Ron Unz - 692 Words

For many years now, conservatives have denounced the so-called “long march through the institutions,” the process by which left-liberals gained control of universities and the media, and thereby the power to set the terms of our national policy debate on … Continue reading →

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Immigration, Republicans, and the End of White America

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Ron Unz - 12156 Words

Immigration, Republicans, and the End of White America by Ron Unz The sources of America’s immigration problems—and a possible solution The American Conservative, October 2011, COVER STORY Will mass immigration destroy the GOP? Can our middle-class society survive high immigration … Continue reading →

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Larry Summers and Harvard

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Ron Unz - 355 Words

As I’ve repeatedly pointed out over the years, during the last decade or so Harvard University had basically become a gigantic hedge-fund, with some sort of little school or whatever attached to one side. For example, I think I once … Continue reading →

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A Trillion Here and A Trillion There…

Posted on November 26, 2008 by Ron Unz - 343 Words

According to an estimate by Bloomberg News released this morning, the sum of the new commitments already made by the federal government in its financial bailout has already reached a total of 8.5 trillion dollars, including loans, investments, guarantees, and other liabilities. Frankly, this … Continue reading →

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The Red-and-Black Fund

Posted on March 1, 2008 by Ron Unz - 282 Words

Since another multi-billion-dollar hedge fund announced on Friday that it had lost almost all its money and was liquidating, I suppose it’s a little too late for me to start my own Red-and-Black Fund, based on some shrewd investment principles I worked out … Continue reading →

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One-Fifth?

Posted on January 16, 2008 by Ron Unz - 415 Words

This morning, Citicorp, previously America’s largest bank, wrote down the value of its security holdings by an additional $22B, following massive multi-billion-dollar write-downs in previous quarters. The total market value of Citicorp has now been cut in half. Merrill Lynch, … Continue reading →

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Problems with Privatization

Posted on March 15, 2005 by Ron Unz - 616 Words

For the last few decades, ideological libertarians have pretty consistently advocated the privatization of major government services, arguing that profit-maximizing incentives of free market competition inherently lead to greater efficiency than government administrative bureaucracy. I’ll admit that during most of this time, I never … Continue reading →

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Options and Threats

Posted on August 30, 2002 by Ron Unz - 553 Words

Last week, I distributed a column reviewing the financial and accounting tricks that have played such a major role in recently erasing some seven trillion dollars of value from our capital markets. This piece generated a great deal of response, … Continue reading →

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Taking Stock

Posted on August 25, 2002 by Ron Unz - 874 Words

“Taking Stock” by Ron Unz The Los Angeles Times, Sunday, August 25th, 2002 PALO ALTO—Regulators looking at how stock options are accounted for have seen cause for concern. I see opportunity. It’s true that when actual expenses don’t appear on an … Continue reading →

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Options and Perpetual Motion

Posted on August 15, 2002 by Ron Unz - 296 Words

Options and Perpetual Motion by Ron Unz Wall Street Journal (Letters), Thursday, August 15, 2002 In his Aug. 8 editorial page commentary, “The Real Value of Options,” Harvey Golub, the former CEO of American Express, argued that the issuance of stock options … Continue reading →

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Wealth and Stupidity

Posted on August 13, 2002 by Ron Unz - 3409 Words

Just over twenty years ago, at the dawn of the 1980s, a conservative theorist named George Gilder published a million-copy international best-seller entitled Wealth and Poverty, providing an intellectual case for the superiority of free markets and entrepreneurial capitalism over … Continue reading →

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