In an abrupt reversal, rural communities are outpacing urban growth... A revival is building all along the “Hillbilly Highway.”
Letter From Toledo, Ohio
Will A Rust Belt City Shine Again? Word's out that the Heartland of America has gone missing. If you're looking for smokestacks to guide you on a flight from Los Angeles to New York, good luck. They've mostly been dumped into the Great Lakes.
Pigs Get Slaughtered
“It’s the fat pig that feels the butcher’s knife.”- Old Chinese saying
Puppies Are Cute
How Passing a Bill Might Leave a Wet Spot on the Carpet It doesn’t matter where they come from. Be they Coastal or Heartlander, once they arrive in Washington, D.C., and are sworn into Congress, they all convert (or revert) to large-scale Coastal...
A North Korean Opportunity for America and China
The foundational economic ties for the Sino-American relationship are now a source of friction...
June 2018: Inside This Issue
This month, we’re talking about the Heartland… The mysterious middle of America that few folks on the Coast understand. It’s blamed for weighing down GDP… for electing President Donald Trump… even for holding on to...
The city was silent… ‘Mother of all credit bubbles’… What will kill the American empire
Dear reader, I remember well the day after President Trump won the election… It was the most silent I’ve ever heard D.C., the city I now call home. The political establishment was – finally – shocked silent, if for only a day. But if...
Home in the heartland… Did we learn anything?… Gov’t theft hates competition
In our June issue – out to you in two weeks – we're talking about the Heartland. The middle of America has a lot of nicknames... few of them complimentary.
The Smart Way to Save
Use This 1996 Law to Increase Both Your Wealth and the Smarts of Your Family
Saving Education
One of these years, maybe I’ll be able to begin this letter by reporting that it was a placid, relaxed year across the higher education landscape. Not yet.
The Unexpected Upside of a Religious Education
Looking back at a rich (and often richly absurd) alternative Christian universe...
Wall Street on the Big Screen
Finance is the great neglected subject of American art. Among the enduring American writers, only Theodore Dreiser took up the serious study of the “Lord of Finance” as a central figure in the national story. His extraordinary novels The Financier...
The Dark Side of Facebook’s Global Social Media Domination
It started with a bunch of college kids wanting to see photos of each other online back in 2004. Now, Facebook is among the most valuable companies in the world, with a market cap of around $450 billion. The social media behemoth boasts 2.2 billion...
Protect Your Portfolio While Taking Advantage of Rising Volatility
An interview with Matt Weinschenk, senior analyst, Retirement Trader Matt Weinschenk Q: Stocks have marched higher for the past nine or so years. It has been a historic move, but folks on Wall Street have mixed opinions whether the bull market can...
End of the Anti-Fear Trade
The day I warned about arrived on Monday, February 5. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) closed 115% higher than Friday’s close. And some investors lost everything... Before we get to the hairy details, I bet most investors who lost money trading VIX...
Safe in the Fishbowl
In the future, most people will live in a total surveillance state – and some of us might even like it.
The $200,000 Phone Call
To me the saddest part of living a security-and-surveillance life is that we’re never far, far away anymore. We’re always in view. We’re always connected. We’re never in an unknown place. There is no Middle-of-Nowhere left, no “it’s not the end of...
Who Got Paid in This Massive Russian Energy Deal?
What’s going on between Carter Page, broker fees, Rex Tillerson, government sanctions, and Russia’s Rosneft energy giant...
Some Thoughts on The History of Trade
We cannot consider Asia without considering trade. Our trade with China, for example. Some may view it with alarm...
One Kim to Rule Them All
Everything You Need To Know About The North Korean Threat Laugh if you want at the fat little men with bad haircuts who always seem to be in charge of the place, or the pants-wetting adulation at its immense choreographed rallies for those same...
Singapore’s Property Market Is Coming Back to Life
It’s one of the greatest transformations the world has ever seen... In 1965, the small island nation of Singapore was in bad shape. It had few natural resources, double-digit unemployment, and an uneducated population. At just 275 square miles (a...
In Asia on the Ground
When You Do Business In China Everything Gets Thrown At You – Including a Wrench When the talk turns to Asia, I (P.J.) turn to “Tom” and “Mai” in Hong Kong. We’ve been close friends for 30 years. I prize their view because they refuse to view Asia...
The Certain Loser in November’s Congressional Elections
He isn’t a candidate. He isn’t even alive.
But America is going to be a
lot worse off without him.
The Political System Couldn’t Get Any Worse
Those of us who get paid to commit acts of political journalism are fond of overstatement. The trade tends to attract excitable types, easily bored and always on the prowl for new stimuli. I’m not going to say that the Internet was invented for...
What Has the Digital Revolution Done to Print Media?
Great literature is gone. Good journalism has disappeared. Philosophy dove off the highboard of thought only to find the pool of thinking had been drained. Even comic books have been ruined.
One Rule You Must Follow in 2018
If you enact just one rule in your home in the New Year, let it be this: Put down your cellphone.
Men Without Work
Over the past two generations, America has suffered a quiet catastrophe. It is a catastrophe not seen in comparable affluent Western societies. The catastrophe is the collapse of work – for men. In the half century between 1965 and 2015, work rates...
Did You Make 20% or More From the ‘Death of Malls’?
The downtown department store was the retail king for about 60 years. The suburban malls that replaced it have enjoyed a reign nearly that long, and many are now long in the tooth.
Easy Come, Easy Go
I was making $24,000 a year in 1994 as a sales assistant at Morgan Stanley. I was also $10,000 in debt, courtesy of MasterCard and Visa’s generous credit lines. But I had hope because it was December... and that meant Bonus Season was upon us.
Monty Hall’s Lesson for the U.S. Treasury
I’d like to think that God greeted Monty Hall after his death in late September by asking whether he’d like to choose the gift behind Pearly Gate No. 1 or Pearly Gate No. 2...
Debt-Free?…
I woke up this morning and everything was free.
All goods and services... completely free. It had to be true because when the clock radio came on, even NPR was giving away tote bags without begging for donations.
The Kamala Contradiction
The late-August temperature hits 100 degrees in Oakland, California as U.S. Senator Kamala Devi Harris throws a town-hall meeting at Beebe Memorial Cathedral. The unair-conditioned church is sweltering, but hundreds of Kamala fans flow into pews...
Antifa: Sympathy For the Devil
Things today will end much as they did 50 years ago… when I stopped being a noisy young creep By P.J. O’Rourke I’d like to launch into a strong invective about the “antifa,” those noisy young creeps trampling on liberty, vandalizing...
This Month’s Two Worst Political Ideas Ever
“Ever,” of course, is a long time, which is why I’m sticking to this month. The two current worst political ideas cannot – mercifully – be compared to such ideas as communism, Nazism, or the 18th Amendment to the Constitution enforcing prohibition...
The Innovation That Will Drive the Next Oil Supercycle
Innovation: Oil Supercycle You’ve heard of “fracking”… the cutting-edge technology critical to exploiting the American energy renaissance. But you haven’t heard of the new tech that will drive the next commodity...
‘Unnovations’
When people say “innovation” – especially people in business and investment – they say it with a smile. They say it like they’d say “cold beer,” as if it were always a good idea.
How the ‘Real World’ Becomes the Web
The Final Word: By Buck Sexton Machines have been making our lives easier since Archimedes was messing around with pulleys and levers some 2,000 years ago. And with the advances of telephony, computers and the Internet, the explosive acceleration of...
How Robber Barons Became Robin Hoods
Why anti-business business writers give tech titans a free pass on ‘red in tooth and claw’ capitalism… By Andrew Ferguson Among the enduring questions of American journalism – What happened to Amelia Earhart? Who was that guy...
The New Mutant Capitalism
Thirty years ago, it was simple… Now, it’s as if somebody took corporations and exposed them to atomic bomb test radiation. Letter from the Editor: From Editor in Chief P.J. O’Rourke Something strange has happened to capitalism...
What’s the Connection?
Planning to store a fortune on the Internet is not a trivial matter…
The New E-Mail
Quietly duplicating a trade that changed 400 years of history in four hours…
and why its death has been predicted 129 times already
Wall Street’s Last Great Party Boy
The dying art of wining and dining on Wall Street By Turney Duff It’s Friday evening and one of the last great partiers on Wall Street has plans to stay in. The 47-year-old sales trader sits on a black Fendi Casa sofa while playing Grand Theft Auto...
Trump Must Beat the Siege
The Final Word: By Buck Sexton The White House is under a siege worthy of the Ottoman Turks in 1453. And like the destruction of Constantinople and the end of Byzantine Empire, President Trump’s whole regime will fall unless he manages to shore up...
