The CAPM—the standard model upon which much of the investment industry is built—is “absurd,” according to University of Navarra Professor Pablo Fernandez, and its assumptions have “no basis in the real world.” I am inclined to agree. For those unversed in the language of modern finance, the CAPM—or Capital Asset Pricing Model—is a formula that...Read More

According to a recent study at Oxford University, nearly half of U.S. jobs are at risk of computerization. 45% of America’s occupations will be automated away over the next two decades. That sounds scary, and my bet is that it proves to be true. But it’s also nothing new.  Technology has been making jobs obsolete...Read More

For centuries the Islamic world dominated the West militarily, economically, and culturally.  As late as 1683, when Ottoman forces laid siege to Vienna, Muslim military domination was a legitimate fear for the Christian world. Excluding the sophisticated Byzantine Empire—which Muslim Arab forces nearly conquered and Muslim Turkish forces did conquer in 1453—and some of the...Read More

I commented in a previous article that “if you think that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is unpopular, consider the tragic case of Takahashi Korekiyo, who served as Bank of Japan governor from 1911-1913 and as finance minister and prime minister in the 1920s and 1930s.” Mr. Takahashi helped to pull Japan out of the Great...Read More

The following is an excerpt from an article I originally wrote in June 2008.  Today, with the Bush tax cuts set to expire, the insights of this article are more important than ever. Moving on to a different area in human predictability, Gerald Prante of the Tax Foundation recommended a white paper that examines how...Read More