Tag: Letter
Capital Letter: The Grounds of Wrath
The week of January 31: Starbucks, inflation, China, and more.
I was wondering what to write about this week when a politician spilled (metaphorically speaking) a cup of coffee all over my screen. As so often, the trouble started on Twitter, specifically with a tweet by the New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher:
Headline: Starbucks will raise prices again, citing higher costs
Dek: The company’s profit soared 31 percent, to $816 million, in the last three months of
The Capital Letter: What Is a Company For?
The week of January 24: the purpose of a corporation, ‘social purpose’ capitalism, Ukraine, energy policy, and more.
The rise of stakeholder capitalism has focused attention on the question of what a company is for. In the U.S., at least, that question was thought to have been answered decades ago. The primary purpose of a business was that it should be run for the benefit of its owners — the shareholders — a
The Capital Letter: Rise of the Imperial Regulator
The week of November 15: regulatory creep, inflation, taxation, and much, much more.
I was going to write this week about the president’s, uh, ambitious claim that some sort of conspiracy was behind the increase in the oil price, but numerous NR types got there first.
As Charlie Cooke noted, there is something somewhat contradictory about the administration’s energy policy at the moment:
Simultaneously Biden has taken to arguing (a)
Capital Letter: Inflation, Farewell to Transitory
The week of November 8: inflation, climate, antitrust, and much more.
I began this week expecting that the next Capital Letter was going to be about the second week of the climate talks in Scotland, but apart from the observation that a (somewhat nebulous) joint climate declaration between the U.S. and China only underlines the extent to which the administration’s climate agenda is weakening this country’s strategic position, any other comments I may have will have to wait
The Capital Letter: Climate, Democracy, and Other People’s Money
The week of November 1: COP-26, corporatism, inflation, and much, much, more.
Reconciling the climate warriors’ agenda with either free markets or basic democratic accountability is not — how to put this — straightforward. Those attending the COP-26 conference now under way in Scotland are not
The Capital Letter — The Omnishambles
The week of October 25: chaos, energy, inflation, taxation, stagflation, and much, much more (little of it good).
Omnishambles is a neologism first used in the BBC political satire The Thick of Itin 2009. The word is compounded from the Latin prefix omni-, meaning “all”, and the word shambles, a term for a situation of total disorder. Originally a “shambles” denoted the designated stock-felling and butchery zone of a medieval street market, from the butchers’ benches
Capital Letter: Energy, Climate Policy, and Inflation
The week of October 11: a grim cocktail (an energy crunch, inflation, and a supply-chain mess) and much, much more.
Sooner or later, I will have to write something more detailed about the supply-chain mess, but for now, please note what NR’s Dominic Pino has been writing on the subject (see below). I’ll just note one early concern
Capital Letter: Green Energy’s Inconvenient Moment
The week of September 20: ESG, energy, Carter vs. Biden and much, much more.
Significant portions of the last two weeks’ Capital Letters have been focused on the growing energy crunch in Europe — a crunch that has revolved primarily around natural gas, but which has also highlighted the unreliability of wind energy. This crunch, which is rapidly
Capital Letter: Europe’s Energy Mess Gets Worse
The week of September 13: climate policy and Europe’s energy crunch, inflation, taxation, and much more.
Much of last week’s Capital Letter was focused on the growing energy crunch in Europe — a crunch that has something (but not everything) to do with needlessly destructive climate policies, and has, quite clearly, lessons for the U.S.
Anyone who reached the end of that part of the Letter — it was