News Story of the Day: here is some bad news that’s reminiscent of the crash a decade ago: margin debt reached $669 billion in May, says the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). This represents a 2.9 percent from April, and the previous record was in January when it hit $665 billion.
But here’s the kicker: today’s margin debt is $170 billion than its peak in 2007.
Why should we worry? This is when traders borrow from their broker to buy securities.
Chart of the Day: this week, President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. The left immediately opposed the pick even before Trump announced it, while the right championed the move. Kavanaugh is certainly not Neil Gorsuch or pro-freedom: he likes the police state, he opposes the Fourth Amendment, and he is pretty moderate.
Is SCOTUS in line with the views of the average American? Hardly, according to The New York Times.
Illustration of the Day: recently, a liberal Huffington Post writer was frightened to find a black man had a different opinion than hers. He drove a BMW and he had two stickers: one pro-NRA and one pro-Tea Party. Oh, the humanity!
Here is a cartoon that perfectly illustrates how white liberals behave toward black people:
Quote of the Day: what did legendary economist Murray Rothbard think about tariffs? It’s a lesson that President Trump should look at:
The best way to look at tariffs or import quotas or other protectionist restraints is to forget about political boundaries.
Political boundaries of nations may be important for other reasons, but they have no economic meaning whatever. Suppose, for example, that each state of the United States were a separate nation. Then we would hear a lot of protectionist bellyaching that we are now fortunately spared. Think of the howls by inefficient, high-priced New York or Rhode Island textile manufacturers who would then be complaining about the “unfair,” “cheap labor” competition from various low-type “foreigners” from Tennessee or North Carolina, or vice versa. Fortunately, the absurdity of worrying about the balance of payments is made evident by focusing on interstate trade. For nobody worries about the balance of payments between New York and New Jersey, or, for that matter, between Manhattan and Brooklyn, because there are no customs officials recording such trade and such balances.
If we think about it, it is clear that a call by New York firms for a tariff against North Carolina is a pure ripoff of New York (as well as North Carolina) consumers, a naked grab for coerced special privilege by inefficient business firms. If the 50 states were separate nations, the protectionists would then be able to use the trappings of patriotism, and distrust of foreigners, to camouflage and get away with their looting the consumers of their own region.
Fortunately, interstate tariffs are unconstitutional. But even with this clear barrier, and even without being able to wrap themselves in the cloak of nationalism, protectionists have been able to impose interstate tariffs in another guise. Part of the drive for continuing increases in the federal minimum wage law is to impose a protectionist device against lower-wage, lower-labor-cost competition from North Carolina and other southern states against their New England and New York competitors.
Tweet of the Day: the neoconservatives are upset that President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin may come to a deal that allows U.S. troops to pull out of Syria. They’re angry.
Neocon Rogin in a total meltdown panic attack at the thought of US troops pulling out of Syria now that ISIS and al-Qaeda all but finished. Why, Josh? Please tell us? https://t.co/DzZ2eF9lwj
— Daniel McAdams (@DanielLMcAdams) July 13, 2018
Video of the Day: you gotta love it every time Trump puts down CNN, particularly Jim “Dear Diary” Acosta.
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