Artis Shepherd
Chicago
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Articles by Artis Shepherd
The Great Disconnect: When Wealth and Productive Ability Diverge
Audio Mises Wire Tags: Capitalism, Cronyism and Corporatism, The Entrepreneur, The Fed What is the Mises Institute? Become a Member
The Great Disconnect: When Wealth and Productive Ability Diverge
Cathie Wood is the co-founder of ARK Invest—an investment management firm known primarily for Ms. Wood’s appearances on financial news networks and her penchant for chasing high-flying tech stocks and other speculative assets. Even a small sampling of Ms. Wood’s television appearances and reporting reveals little aptitude for investing or critical reasoning. Rather, she is a trend-chaser, buying stocks and other assets that have already gone up sharply and made splashy headlines in the process.
Barbarians at the Redemption Gate
This article was originally published by Artis Shepard at The Mises Institute. When interest rates are pushed artificially low in the midst of constantly-increasing costs of living, the avenues by which average Americans save and grow their wealth are limited. Frugality—demonstrated by spending less than you earn and socking away a portion of your income in bank CDs—becomes an exercise in frustration as widespread price inflation eats away any nominal increase in wealth.
Barbarians at the Redemption Gate
When interest rates are pushed artificially low in the midst of constantly-increasing costs of living, the avenues by which average Americans save and grow their wealth are limited. Frugality—demonstrated by spending less than you earn and socking away a portion of your income in bank CDs—becomes an exercise in frustration as widespread price inflation eats away any nominal increase in wealth.
Homeownership “Wealth” Is a Fallacy
It seems the housing market is destined to be the target of yet another administration’s clumsy tinkering. In another quiet-part-out-loud incident at the White House recently, the president was asked whether he would declare a national emergency in order to act on housing affordability. Trump responded that he doesn’t want house prices to go down because home valuations are such a large part of the “net worth” of homeowners, especially those in “their later years.” The exchange is worth watching.
Kalshi Culture: How Gambling, Speculation, and Degeneracy Went Mainstream
Audio Mises Wire Tags: Booms and Busts, Cronyism and Corporatism, Inflation, Politics What is the Mises Institute? Become a Member
Kalshi Culture: How Gambling, Speculation, and Degeneracy Went Mainstream
In a recent interview, Tarek Mansour, the co-founder of Kalshi—a company with a marketplace where users gamble on the outcome of future events—said “the long-term vision [of the company] is to financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference in opinion.” Currently, Kalshi users can place bets on virtually anything—from the outcome of a college football game to whether it will rain in Dallas next week to who Donald Trump will pardon during his presidency.
Solutions to the Affordability Crisis Will Not Come from Government
In the midst of significant weakness in the job market, liquidity issues in money markets, and increased scrutiny of certain capital market bubbles, it has become apparent to all that an affordability crisis exists. As the “Everything Bubble” temporarily recedes, it no longer distracts completely from the economic damage created by easy money and inflation.
Easy Money Breeds Fraud: The Cases of Tricolor and First Brands
It is an axiom of asset bubbles that—under the bustling surface—widespread malfeasance takes place. This is especially true near the end of asset bubbles, where participants fear missing out on the supposed riches produced therein, but—failing to achieve them—ultimately resort to chicanery and fraud to achieve their ends. In financialized economies, like those of the US and most of the developed world, the problem is obscured, making discovery more difficult.
The Scouring of the American Middle Class
The war of words between President Donald Trump and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has been revealed as largely histrionic. Like their predecessors—Richard Nixon and Arthur Burns—over 50 years ago, Trump and Powell have been acting out a performative charade regarding when and to what extent artificially low interest rates should go even lower in the midst of persistent inflation. The supposed sparring between Trump and Powell merely guarantees the result both want—more easy money.
What Happened to the Profit and Loss System?
In a free market, the profit-and-loss system plays an essential role. It signals how resources should be allocated, enabling entrepreneurs to pursue productive avenues and make long-term plans. By the same token, a system of profit and loss identifies those entrepreneurs able to synthesize market information, gather required inputs at a certain cost, and sell the output above that cost. Good entrepreneurs are rewarded with profits while the bad entrepreneurs experience losses and ultimately fail.
The Great Delisting: Home Sellers Scoff at Peasant Prices
AD Commentary The bid-ask spread in the housing market persists. Over the last several years, home sellers have become accustomed to double-digit percentage price increases annually, going under contract within a week, and—very often—fielding competing offers above list price.
The Great Delisting: Home Sellers Scoff at Peasant Prices
The bid-ask spread in the housing market persists. Over the last several years, home sellers have become accustomed to double-digit percentage price increases annually, going under contract within a week, and—very often—fielding competing offers above list price. Since roughly 2023—after benchmark interest rates began rising in 2022, slightly cooling capital markets—this is no longer the case.
America’s War on Arab Christians
Audio Mises Wire Tags: War and Foreign Policy, World History
America’s War on Arab Christians
Tucker Carlson’s recent castration of Texas senator Ted Cruz produced several notable moments, one of which came when Cruz asserted that the Bible commands Christians to support Israel—by which he meant the political entity established in 1948 as the State of Israel. To many Christians of Arab origin, this interpretation of biblical writ is simultaneously amusing and frustrating, eliciting more questions than scripture can answer.
The Bid-Ask Spread in Housing and “Pulte’s Law”
Bureaucrats are well known for their economic illiteracy, but few have displayed it with such glaring buffoonery as Bill Pulte, the current Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (“FHFA”) and a Trump nominee. Typical examples of Pulte’s irritating squeaks are pasted below from his Twitter account.
Commercial Real Estate Is in Trouble
Radio Rothbard Tags: Interventionism, Booms and Busts, U.S. History 06/19/2025 • Ryan McMaken • Artis Shepherd What is the Mises Institute? Become a Member
Commercial Real Estate Is in Trouble
Populism and Classical Liberalism: Is There an Intersection? 2025-02-14 I write here to offer a teaser for a video on populism and classical liberalism, a lecture which I gave for the Bruno Leoni Institute in Milan. I redid the lecture on my own, and the recording has been graciously posted by Glenn Diesen:YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMMqrwZISjYThe slide-deck, which contains links, is here.Here are some points and slides from the lecture.
Trump, DOGE, and the Machiavellians
Audio Mises Wire Tags: Big Government, Cronyism and Corporatism, Taxes and Spending
Trump, DOGE, and the Machiavellians
The Trump administration is spending more than the Biden administration, compared to the same period last year. This is no small feat, as the proxies that stood in for the senile and incontinent former president spent at an extravagant pace in their final year, even by federal government standards. Fiscal year 2025 is virtually guaranteed to produce a deficit in excess of $2 trillion. The current year-to-date deficit stands at $1.05 trillion seven months in, with the April surplus now behind us.
Apartment Metrics Worsen as the “Fed-ministration” Readies More Easy Money
One of the hot topics in US monetary policy is whether Washington should follow a “super-loose” approach endorsed by Jay Powell or an “ultra-loose” approach demanded by President Trump. Under the guise of Fed independence—an obvious fallacy—the two politicians have orchestrated a media charade that fits precisely between the boundaries of the Keynesian establishment’s Overton window.
Stocks Are the Noise, Bonds Are the Signal
Following the Trump administration’s recent implementation—followed by a quick withdrawal—of import tariffs on many other countries, capital markets swung wildly. Equities oscillated between steep losses and exuberant gains, remaining absurdly expensive as of April 11, the end of the trading week. More importantly, bond values across the board took a dive. High-yield bonds—a euphemism for subprime corporate credit—had been trading at near-record low spreads to treasuries prior to the tariff drama.
Warren Buffett Gets It Wrong
This article was originally published by Artis Shepherd at The Mises Institute. Berkshire Hathaway—the investment holding company run by Warren Buffett for the last sixty years—released its much-awaited annual report in late February. In the report, Buffett himself delved into the topic of capitalism and America’s relationship thereto.
Warren Buffett Gets It Wrong
Berkshire Hathaway—the investment holding company run by Warren Buffett for the last sixty years—released its much-awaited annual report in late February. In the report, Buffett himself delved into the topic of capitalism and America’s relationship thereto. Early in the preamble to the report, Buffett hints at the connection between inflation and government malfeasance: Paper money can see its value evaporate if fiscal folly prevails.
Warren Buffett Gets It Wrong
Berkshire Hathaway—the investment holding company run by Warren Buffett for the last sixty years—released its much-awaited annual report in late February. In the report, Buffett himself delved into the topic of capitalism and America’s relationship thereto. Early in the preamble to the report, Buffett hints at the connection between inflation and government malfeasance: Paper money can see its value evaporate if fiscal folly prevails.
Subprime Redux: Commercial Real Estate Bond Distress Hits Another Record High
At the end of Q4 2024, commercial real estate continued to exhibit severe weakness, with commercial real estate bonds hitting record distress levels, surpassing the previous records reached in Q3 2024. Commercial real estate bonds are just commercial real estate loans packaged into securities and sold to investors. One category of bonds, commercial mortgage-backed securities (“CMBS”), saw their distress rate increase to 10.6 percent, a fourth consecutive monthly record.
Boom to Broke: Apartment Syndicators Learn the Hard Way
The apartment investment industry—like many other asset classes—recently experienced a massive bubble. Peaking in the period from 2020 to mid-2022, this particular bubble was driven by multiple factors. As a proximate cause, risky bridge loans came to dominate apartment investment. These loans made short-term, high leverage, floating-rate debt the norm when acquiring apartment properties.
2025: More Inflation, More Asset Bubbles, and More QE?
Capital markets, monetary policy, fiscal policy. The extent to which these three factors intertwine is of no small consequence to the American economy. On one hand, loose monetary policy generally enables the politically-desired fiscal policy—big deficit spending—by lowering the cost at which governments borrow.
Distress in Commercial Real Estate Bonds Hits All-Time High
Audio Mises Wire Tags: Cronyism and Corporatism, Financial Markets, Money and Banks What is the Mises Institute? Become a Member
A Dubious Victory in Syria
Damascus has fallen. After thirteen years of brutal civil war, Bashar al-Assad—who once vowed to die in Syria—has fled to Moscow, leaving behind a nation in tatters. But Syria’s next chapter may be even darker than its last. As I wrote last year, the recent civil war in Syria, begun in 2011, was primarily a sectarian battle, always simmering but brought to a boil by the wider upheavals in the Arab world at the time and specific igniting events in Syria itself.
Caplan’s Errors on the UAE and Open Borders
Audio Mises Wire Tags: Immigration, Libertarianism, Media and Culture What is the Mises Institute? Become a Member
Markets Made of Glass-How the Fed Destroyed Economic Resilience
Audio Mises Wire Tags: Booms and Busts, The Fed, Financial Markets, U.S. History What is the Mises Institute? Become a Member
US Bond Yields Rise as Reserve Currency Status Wanes
With much consternation, capital markets participants are watching US treasury bond yields go up while Jerome Powell and the Fed continue to lower the Fed Funds Rate in an effort to spur another round of easy money. The Fed Funds rate is a short-term interest rate used for interbank borrowing. US treasury bonds are medium-long term securities that represent the sovereign debt of the US government, so the yield on those bonds represents the US government’s cost of borrowing.
Distress in Commercial Real Estate Bonds Hits All-Time High
Commercial real estate continues to suffer despite the Federal Reserve’s attempt at ameliorating the capital markets with a 50-basis point rate cut in September. The pain is especially apparent in the so-called “CRE-CLO” bond market. CRE-CLO bonds are packaged commercial real estate mortgages comprising short-term floating rate loans.
Caplan’s Errors on the UAE and Open Borders
Summary: Arguments advanced to support a political position often fail to withstand the slightest scrutiny. Rather, they are meant to make an impression on the impressionable—those who lack the context required to make an evaluation—and draw large numbers of the uninformed to one side of a political debate.
Caplan’s Errors on the UAE and Open Borders
Arguments advanced to support a political position often fail to withstand the slightest scrutiny. Rather, they are meant to make an impression on the impressionable—those who lack the context required to make an evaluation—and draw large numbers of the uninformed to one side of a political debate. Such is the case with libertarian economist Bryan Caplan’s recent article in favor of unrestricted immigration, wherein he uses the United Arab Emirates as a supposed template for open borders policy.
Markets Made of Glass-How the Fed Destroyed Economic Resilience
Central to any good investor’s decision-making process is determining the degree to which the target of investment is “robust to the downside.” Can the investment maintain its value—or even continue to provide sufficient return on capital—in the event of a pullback in the broader economy or a specific sector?
Home Ownership Is Not the American Dream
Audio Mises Wire Tags: Bureaucracy and Regulation, The Fed, Inflation
Home Ownership Is Not the American Dream
In a recent interview with Bill Maher, Nancy Pelosi discussed a recently proposed California law—Assembly Bill 1840—that aimed to provide taxpayer funds to first-time homebuyers regardless of immigration status.
Homeownership Is Not the American Dream
In a recent interview with Bill Maher, Nancy Pelosi discussed a recently proposed California law—Assembly Bill 1840—that aimed to provide taxpayer funds to first-time homebuyers regardless of immigration status.
The Comic Absurdity of a US Sovereign Wealth Fund
In recent weeks, both candidate Donald Trump and President Biden—via his staff—have expressed support for the idea of a US sovereign wealth fund (“SWF”). An SWF is simply an investment fund run by a national government. Ostensibly, the goals of such a venture are twofold—to increase the wealth of America and its citizens, and to spur innovation in “critical” areas like infrastructure, technology, and medicine.
Why the Crony Class Loves Artificially-Low Interest Rates-And Why You Shouldn’t
Audio Mises Wire Tags: The Fed, Inflation, Monetary Policy, U.S. Economy What is the Mises Institute? Become a Member
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