Peter's Blog

U.S. Economy Stumbles into Negative Territory Amid Rising Inflation and Imports

America’s economy contracted slightly in the first quarter of 2025, with real GDP slipping 0.3%, reversing from a solid 2.4% growth seen in the previous quarter. According to the advance estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the downturn was largely driven by surging imports and reduced government spending. Despite underlying resilience in […]

Jamie Dimon and the boring secret of JPMorgan’s success

At the start of the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Government reached out to one company they knew could handle the catastrophically managed Bear Stearns. They knew JPMorgan would be able to handle a massive administrative and financial challenge even as others faltered. JPMorgan still suffered from the 2008 crisis, but far less than most […]

Visa, Mastercard, and Russian Commerce

It’s very easy to keep faith in modern electronic payment systems when there is nothing going wrong with them. Russians in March 2022 did not have the same luxury. Due to the country’s involvement in the war with Ukraine, Visa, MasterCard, and several other payment platforms punished all Russians. They did this in three separate […]

Insurance With a Little Shine

Everyone knows that all investments carry some amount of risk. This ranges from highly speculative cryptocurrencies to low return bonds with far lower risk. One area that people do not assign enough risk to is insurance. Insurance is supposed to be a safeguard against risk, so it seems odd to recognize that it also can […]

Antitrust on Trial: Why the FTC is an Arbitrary Threat to Fair Business

While primarily motivated by a desire to promote consumer welfare, antitrust has become a witch hunt which endangers the ability of businesses in general to effectively operate. Antitrust regulation was created on the idea that businesses can effectively collude to keep prices high, and that the emergence of monopolies will create a stable threat to […]

Educating a Nation: Democracy, Defense, and the Federal Hand

 Harvard faces an unprecedented threat to its scale and role in the life of the Nation. Its lack of compliance with the President has made it face the potential of losing billions of dollars of federal funds. As well endowed as the university is, a significant portion of its operating budget comes from federal grants […]

Treasury Yields Running Amok Amidst Tariff Madness

The Trump administration wanted to get bond yields down, but yields have skyrocketed more than in over four decades. Investors are jittery about holding US debt in response to Trump’s trade wars and, possibly, the idea of a president who is pushing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in what would amount to a bid against the […]

The Fed’s April Fool’s: Pretending to Control Inflation

This year’s April Fools joke from the Federal Reserve is the same this year as every other:  Pretending that a small group of unelected academics can micromanage the economy to create an ideal balance between employment, inflation, and cost of borrowing. The Fed wants to control the economy, but all it achieves is distortion. And […]

Doomsday Policy and Dirty Ticket Pricing

What can dubious pricing strategies of airlines in the 1990s teach us about the dynamics of the U.S. government? The Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) allowed airlines to post their prices online long before the airlines actually had to commit to offering those prices to consumers. This was supposed to allow freedom of information on […]

 Liberty’s Strongest Defender

Whether it is industry or immigration, both parties emphasize the freedoms they protect, wishing to paint themselves as the true party of liberty. Their focuses are both quite different yet they rely on telling their base that the other party is coming for their most fundamental freedoms. This argument works because it plays upon one […]