Pssst. Want to buy some Stossels?

That's the question I ask in my syndicated column this week:

Why should you trust ?

Because I promise to redeem them for gold. And I'm reliable. I have money in the bank and a job that brings in more than I spend. ... continue reading »

Complaining about high oil prices last week, Bill O'Reilly argued:

There is plenty of oil in the USA. Prices should not be at record levels. But they are because the oil companies are sending their products overseas to make more money...

His solution? America should tax American oil refiners when they sell overseas:

If you are going to refine in the United States, you sell to the United States. And if you don't, you pay a higher tax to export, all right?

That's intuitive: Keep gasoline in America to keep prices low.

... continue reading »

Bill O'Reilly was on the warpath last week about record-high oil prices. He says collusion among greedy oil companies is a big factor, and he bet me $1,000 that the gas stations in his town charged the "exact same price," which he says is evidence that they collude.

I checked his town's prices, and he's wrong. I win $1000! Here were the prices this afternoon:

Gulf: $3.95 ... Getty: $3.99 ... Shell: $4.05 ... Mobil: $4.07... continue reading »

I have written several blog posts explaining why Dodd-Frank creates more problems than solutions. But, I was shocked to see my friends at the New York Times are now calling the legislation a jobs program, of all things, because it has created work for accountants and compliance officers... continue reading »

In his column today, Ezra Klein sums up Keynesian economics by saying that Keynes "taught us that although markets are usually self-correcting, they occasionally enter destructive feedback loops....In that situation, the role of the government is to break the cycle. Because businesses and consumers have stopped spending, the government breaks the cycle by spending."... continue reading »

Innovation increases productivity. And that's good. But somehow, our president tells NBC News that he thinks that's bad - that it kills jobs... continue reading »

A new private currency called "Bitcoin" has hit the scene. It is a digital currency that my producer tells me is valauble partly because it's untracable: there is supposedly no way for the government, or anyone else, to see who owns or transfers Bitcoins... continue reading »

On my FBN show this week, we cover entrepreneurs, like the ones who created Intel, Genentech, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft. They created vast wealth and, of course, cool things. Is it coincidence that all that creation happened in San Francisco and Seattle, the two metropolitan areas farthest from Washington DC? I doubt it. Sadly, those company now spend millions on lobbying—millions that would be better spent on inventing.

We’d be better off if we just had fewer rules... continue reading »

Some Americans actually make a living … begging for money. Professional panhandlers, they’re called, sometimes making more than $100 in a day. I tried it in Manhattan, and made over $11 in one hour—that would be $23,000 a year—tax free! It’s a small example of why some said that  the USA is turning into a nation of freeloaders... continue reading »

This weekend, a North Carolina man was convicted of minting and circulating “Liberty Dollars” and “Ron Paul Dollars” that were valued based on the gold and silver they contained. The man, Bernard von NotHaus, now faces up to 25 years in prison and the forfeiture of $7 million worth of gold and silver that was taken by police in a raid. The U.S... continue reading »