Recent Viewpoints

Kerby Anderson The Pottery Barn rule is an expression that was used by Colin Powell when cautioning President Bush about invading Iraq. He said, “You break it, you own it.” Of course, the “you break it, you own it” rule has been used to warn others about a political action they may later come to regret. Several commentators have proposed a corollary expression: “You chant it, you own it.” Bring a tape recorder to any protest or even to a…

Penna Dexter Why aren’t our 20 and 30-year-olds having more children? One reason is economic. Should the U.S. government consider subsidizing childbearing? Robert Whaples, professor of economics at Wake Forest University suggests some less expensive and non-taxpayer-funded ways to convince Americans to have more kids. He lists these ideas in an article in National Review entitled, “We Need More Babies.” First, transporting kids is expensive.  One shocker to families expecting a third child is learning that the back seat in…

Kerby Anderson Now that most of the 2022 midterm elections have been certified, it’s worth looking at some important electoral trends. They will give us some idea of what may take place in the 2024 elections. Lest you think this is premature, consider that next month the first presidential debate will take place. The most surprising trend is the number of close elections. In previous commentaries, I’ve talked about close elections. But the latest results are worth discussing. The bipartisan…

Kerby Anderson In previous commentaries, I have talked about the dollar’s loss of value. We often provide a chart that was generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It shows that the dollar has lost 95 percent of its purchasing power. In a recent keynote speech in Prague, Michael Saylor (MicroStrategy) put together a presentation with numerous graphs. They show even more accurately the decline of the dollar as well as the decline of other currencies around the world. His…

Kerby Anderson When you make an investment, it is important to know if there is any counterparty risk. Any business involves a cooperation of many entities and individuals. How likely is it that one of them may default on their financial obligations? Here’s a scary question: what if the counterparty is your bank or the government? That may be less likely here in the US, but is becoming a reality ever since the 2013 banking crisis in Cyprus created the…

Kerby Anderson Americans are starting to realize how much privacy they are losing. It isn’t just the government through surveillance that is invading our privacy. Major corporations are collecting information on us, even when we aren’t sharing it online. Here is a classic example of that. Twenty years ago, the Target Corporation was able to conclude that a shopper was pregnant and even estimate her due date. The story was written up in the New York Times and has become…

Kerby Anderson Why is it that the left so frequently promotes censorship? Dennis Prager provides some insights in his article, “Why the Left Has to Suppress Free Speech.” He begins by stating a fact from history. The left always suppresses speech, going all the way back to Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. He explains that there is an important difference between liberals and the left. Liberals and conservatives believe in free speech. The left does not. Think…

Penna Dexter Does it seem to you that things that should be working well are not. Not everything. And not all the time. Just certain things don’t work the way we used to expect in America. Electrical grids. Supply chains. Our medical system. Airlines and airports. The service in some retail stores. Am I crazy for thinking this? Not according to institutional investor and writer Harold Robertson, who says, “America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.”  But why? He explains in…

Kerby Anderson I believe it is important for Christians to understand the liberal mind. That is why I have written a booklet on “A Biblical View on the Liberal Mind.” Once you examine the assumptions of liberals and leftists you can see how their views are very different from a biblical perspective. If you do not have a proper view of truth and the world, you will probably also find yourself dissatisfied with life. That is the conclusion of Michael…

Kerby Anderson Three years ago, a presenter at an international conference compared the printing of currency to alchemy. Although I didn’t hear the message, I read enough about it to see the connection. If you are not familiar with the term, it points to alchemists who tried to turn cheap “base” metals into gold. The idea goes all the way back to Aristotle, who believed that all matter combined the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. He guessed…

Kerby Anderson The latest information from the World Economic Forum shows that the Davos crowd wants you to give up your car. Tucked inside a briefing paper is a plan to reduce the number of cars around the world by 75 percent. The title of the paper is: “The Urban Mobility Scorecard Tool: Benchmarking the Transition to Sustainable Urban Mobility.” It begins with the prediction that more than two-thirds of the world’s population will be urban by 2050. The paper…