Voluntary Exchange Sources

02 Feb Trading halts and game over

Posted at 20:04h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

David Battan writing in the WSJ brings come clarity to Robin Hood's trading stop. It raises some questions for me, however. Much of the problem seems to stem from two-day clearing and settlement, and brokers lending people money to trade. Instant settlement and at least...

02 Feb Robinhood and Redditors: Who’s robbin’ who?

Posted at 19:51h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

The recent story of Robinhood and the “short squeeze” on GameStop has raised the question whether Robinhood was doing some squeezing of its own, applied to the delicates of the small traders it serves. The comedian and renowned financial analyst John Stewart said it was...

02 Feb Real Socialism Delivers Misery

Posted at 19:48h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

People hate America’s big disparities in wealth. It’s a reason why, among young people, socialism is as popular as capitalism. The Democratic Socialists of America want a country based on “freedom, equality and solidarity.” That sure sounds good. But does socialism bring that? My new video debunks several...

02 Feb The GameStop Rebels vs. “Too Big to Fail”

Posted at 19:46h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

Last week, a large number of small-time investors drove up the price of GameStop’s (GME) stock a historic 1,784 percent. But this was no mere spike in some obscure stock. The stock’s price spiked in part as a result of efforts by “an army of smaller investors who have...

02 Feb Wall Street Outsiders versus the Hedge Funds

Posted at 19:42h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

The investment world was convulsed last week when at least one hedge fund (Melvin Capital) lost billions of dollars. The sudden, massive losses happened when a tidal wave of independent individual investors, spearheaded by posts on Reddit.com, triggered a short squeeze that torpedoed the hedge fund. For...

02 Feb 5 Socialism Myths: Part 1

Posted at 12:01h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

Socialism is now as popular as capitalism among young people. That’s because they are being told nonsense.So in this video (and the next) we’ll debunk socialism myths.---- Don't miss the weekly video from Stossel TV. Sign up here: https://ift.tt/37hRbtg ----After the fall of the Soviet...

02 Feb The Political Economy of Mass Panic

Posted at 12:01h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

The optimal level of risk is never zero. Otherwise, nobody would ever get up in the morning. But even staying in bed is risky (people die in their sleep). When you drive from home to work your risk of dying is nonzero. When you fly...

02 Feb The Flight of the Covid Quacks

Posted at 11:55h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

A year on and Covid quackery remains a potent force in global public health discourse. We should not be surprised by this as quackery of all sorts suffuses the history of medicine in America and abroad. The recent mass exodus of public health officials from...

01 Feb Stakeholder Capitalism and the “Great Reset”

Posted at 18:01h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

A couple of weeks ago I published an article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, in which I have defended stakeholder value capitalism vis à vis the “great reset” envisioned by the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab. The title of the piece is: “A better capitalism...

01 Feb The Market Makes People Pay for Their Prejudices

Posted at 18:00h in Voluntary Exchange Sources by one80Admin

(Don Boudreaux) TweetAs Art Carden notes, today is the 77th birthday of the great economic historian Robert Higgs. One of Bob’s many pioneering books is his 1977 Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865-1914. I thought of Bob’s research and scholarship yesterday as I...