- December 13, 2024
Demanding Energy
Energy is everything. Or, if Einstein was right, you and I are just energy in material form. Accelerate us to lightspeed squared and we might become something else.
Read moreThoughts from the Frontline: Tag = "mauldin"
- November 29, 2024
The Changing Nature of the Stock Market?
The question on “everyone’s” mind, whether the back or the front, is where will the stock market be in two, three, six years? This week, in what I hope is a short Thanksgiving letter, I will talk about why that is simultaneously one of the most important and irrelevant questions you should be thinking about as we come into the holiday season.
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- November 22, 2024
Waste, Fraud, and Abuse
Politicians and think-tank wonks of all stripes love to condemn government “waste, fraud, and abuse.” But saying it isn’t hard. Who is the opposition? No one says we need more waste, fraud, and abuse. We’re all 100% agreed all three are bad.
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- November 15, 2024
The Trump Inflation Problem
Two weeks ago, I opened this letter by noting the election uncertainty, once over, would give way to a different uncertainty about what comes next. That’s where we are now.
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- November 1, 2024
One-Way Road to Crisis
Anyone else ready for the election to be over? This uncertainty is exhausting, no matter how you want it to end. But sadly, it won’t really end. We will just transition to a different uncertainty over what will happen next. I will offer my thoughts on the election at the end of this letter, after setting the stage.
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- October 25, 2024
Broken China
Here in the US, people are obsessed with the impending election. It is perhaps the World’s Largest Guessing Game. We can look at polls and make our best guesses, but no one really knows what will happen. We just have to wait for more data which will (hopefully) be forthcoming November 5 or soon afterward.
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- October 18, 2024
Frozen Homes
Official inflation data, while imperfect in many ways, at least has the advantage of being consistently imperfect. This lets us make comparisons across time. The magnitude may be off, but the direction is usually right (except at unusually sharp turns like 2020).
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- October 11, 2024
Hard or Soft?
A challenge in writing a weekly letter like this is that the economy never stops. Important data keeps accumulating, whether I write about it or not.
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- October 4, 2024
The Crisis of Free Speech
“Freedom of speech” is a beautiful phrase, strong, optimistic. It has a ring to it. But it’s being replaced in the discourse by “disinformation” and “misinformation,” words that aren’t beautiful but full of the small, pettifogging, bureaucratic anxiety of a familiar American villain: the busybody, the prohibitionist, the Nosey Parker, the snoop.
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- September 27, 2024
The Revolt of the Public, Part 2
Two weeks ago, I began reviewing Martin Gurri’s important book, The Revolt of the Public, with this framework:
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