Capitalism's founder Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is indeed invisible to most of society. However, that invisible hand now belongs to big business, finance and government -- to whom it is very visible indeed.

The Jets have the seventh pick in the second round of the NFL draft. However, according Adam Schefter of ESPN.com, they are trying to trade for an earlier pick, and they may be targeting Geno Smith. Shefter is reporting that the Jets considered draft

By Smith On Stocks:Purpose of this ReportI have undertaken a point by point examination of a negative blog on Northwest Biotherapeutics (NWBO) by Adam Feuerstein of The Street.Com. I ordinarily don't respond to comments that other bloggers make on co

By Smith On Stocks:Purpose of this ReportI have undertaken a point by point examination of a negative blog on Northwest Biotherapeutics (NWBO) by Adam Feuerstein of The Street.Com. I ordinarily don't respond to comments that other bloggers make on co

By Smith On Stocks:Purpose of this ReportI have undertaken a point by point examination of a negative blog on Northwest Biotherapeutics (NWBO) by Adam Feuerstein of TheStreet.com. I ordinarily don't respond to comments that other bloggers make on com

By Smith On Stocks:Purpose of this ReportI have undertaken a point by point examination of a negative blog on Northwest Biotherapeutics (NWBO) by Adam Feuerstein of TheStreet.com. I ordinarily don't respond to comments that other bloggers make on com

… is from page 294 of Vol. 19 (Ideas, Persons, and Events [2001]) of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan; specifically, it’s from Jim’s 1996 essay “Adam Smith as Inspiration” (emphasis added): Despite the efforts of scientists over t

… is from Book V, Chapter 2 – on page 879, Vol. 2, of the 1981 Liberty Fund edition – of Adam Smith’s 1776 An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: The gains of alien merchants were looked upon more unfavourably

… is from page 295 of Vol. 19 (Ideas, Persons, and Events [2001]) of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan; specifically, it’s from Jim’s 1996 essay “Adam Smith as Inspiration” (footnote original): Return, then, to the minimum wage

In the latest EconTalk, Pete Boettke makes the case (based on his book, Living Economics) for what he calls mainline economics–the tradition going back to Adam Smith via Hayek and others, with a strong emphasis on spontaneous order. He also has

… is from page 292 of Vol. 19 (Ideas, Persons, and Events [2001]) of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan; specifically, it’s from Jim’s 1996 essay “Adam Smith as Inspiration”: To suggest, with welfare economists, that market failure

… is from page 289 of Vol. 19 (Ideas, Persons, and Events [2001]) of The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan; specifically, it’s from Jim’s 1996 essay “Adam Smith as Inspiration”: How well are Adam Smith’s ideas unders

… … is from pages 351-352 of Joseph Schumpeter‘s monumental 1954 History of Economic Analysis; Schumpeter is here speaking of pre-Adam Smith mercantilism and mercantilists: Whether right or wrong, those arguments were in most cases put f

… is from pages 164-165 of J. Marcus Fleming’s 1976 essay “Mercantilism and Free Trade Today,” which is chapter 6 in The Market and the State: Essays in Honour of Adam Smith (Thomas Wilson and Andrew S. Skinner, eds.): To me,

Here’s the great Scot writing in Book V, Chapter 3 – on pages 926-927, Vol. 2, of the 1981 Liberty Fund edition of An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: In the payment of the interest of the public debt, it has

When institutions protect the liberty of individuals, greater prosperity results for all. Economist Adam Smith formed this theory in his influential work, The Wealth of Nations, in 1776. In 2013, his theory is measured by the Index of Economic Freedo

With the passing of Jim Buchanan, it’s a good time to listen to this EconTalk episode with Don on public debt where he draws on Buchanan’s work or this one where I use Buchanan’s insights into specialization and Adam Smith to talk a

… are from the 1987 Liberty Fund edition of the Correspondence of Adam Smith.  The first (on page 286) is from a letter that Smith wrote on November 1, 1785 to François Alexandre Frédéric, le duc de La Rochefoucauld: In a Country where Cl

It's impossible to get every last drop out of a bottle, whether it contains ketchup, mustard or jelly. Until now. Five MIT students, Dave Smith, Rajeev Dhiman, Adam Paxson, Brian Solomon and Chris Love and their professor, Kripa Varanasi, have made a

… is from is from Book IV, Chapter 8 – on page 660, Vol. 2, of the 1981 Liberty Fund edition – of Adam Smith’s 1776 An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all produ

… is from page 69 of Nicholas Phillipson’s 2010 biography of Adam Smith, Adam Smith; here, Phillipson is describing the philosophy of David Hume: It was a theory that was built on the belief that the progress of society depended on the e

…  is from Book IV, Chapter 3 – on page 493, Vol. 1, of the 1981 Liberty Fund edition – of Adam Smith’s 1776 An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: That it was the spirit of monopoly which originally both inv

In the aftermath of the tragedy in Sandy Hook, gun makers have been largely absent from the conversation about what should be done.   Before the shooting, however, Smith and Wesson's CEO P. James Debney apparently wanted to bring more sophistica

Here’s a letter to an e-mail correspondent: 18 December 2012 Dear Mr. L________: Thanks for your e-mail.  You’re the fifth person to write to me to ask my thoughts on General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s recent praise of what he r

By Adam Smith:Despite-or maybe because of-pervasive pessimism, Best Buy (BBY) is a solid long, and its founder, and rumored bidder, Richard Schulze will be stealing away the company from shareholders if he's allowed to purchase the company.Background

… is from page 333 of the 1982 Liberty Fund issue of the 1978 Oxford University Press edition of Adam Smith‘s Lectures on Jurisprudence (available on-line here); specifically, this quotation is from Smith’s lecture of March 28, 176

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Adam Smith was wrong.In his classic The Wealth of Nations, available free from Penn State, Smith predicted that capitalism's winners would reach a point of satiation, that rather than continue to hoard their wealth they would

… is from page 142 of Deirdre McCloskey’s 2006 volume, The Bourgeois Virtues; here Deirdre quotes, at the start, a part of Nancy Folbre‘s assessment of modernity (footnote excluded): “Adam Smith believed [writes Folbre] that

The Asset Price Meltdown and the Wealth of the Middle Class - NBER Household Income Stagnates, Again - NYTimes.com What's The Matter With Italy? - Paul Krugman Inside America’s Tax Battle - Laura Tyson Adam Smith On Exchange - Gavin...

The current argument over gold is a replay of the arguments of Adam Smith against the arguments of the mercantilists. It is the logic of widespread, decentralized private ownership and voluntary contract versus the logic of government licensing, barr

By Adam Tanner LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Dr. Latisha Smith, an expert in decompression sicknesses afflicting deep sea divers, has cleared criminal background checks throughout...

… is from Book I, Chapter X – specifically, from page 138 of the 1981 Liberty Fund edition – of Adam Smith’s 1776 An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: The property which every man has in his own labour,

How to Govern America in 2013 - Brad DeLong How noisy is economics/finance peer review? - James Choi Poor management, not unions, killed Hostess - Michael Hiltzik Franc Thoughts on Bond Vigilantes - Paul Krugman Adam Smith on Government Intervention.

Democracy’s Herald doesn’t like my quotation today from Adam Smith.  Quoting Mr. or Ms. Herald (from an e-mail that he or she sent to me earlier today): Smith’s quote [that "All commerce that is carried on betwixt any two countries

…… is from page 511 of the 1982 Liberty Fund version of the 1978 Oxford University Press edition of Adam Smith’s wisdom-packed Lectures on Jurisprudence; although unusually long for a “Quotation of the Day,” it is also unusuall

The Adam Smith Institute’s report claims growth is being held back by the government failing to think radically enough about enterprise

Those who read this blog know that I love Adam Smith’s comment about there being “a great deal of ruin in a nation.”  It seems to me that many people have trouble putting “failure” in perspective, understanding that a m

Notes on the Political Economy of Redistribution - Paul Krugman Are Romney and His Campaign That Pig-Ignorant? What Mitt Romney Really Represents - Robert Reich Adam Smith Never Mentioned Laissez-Faire - Gavin Kennedy Kocherlakota: Some Iffy Ideas -

… is from page 15 of Thomas Sowell’s 1979 essay “Adam Smith in Theory and Practice,” which is Chapter 1 in Adam Smith and Modern Political Economy, Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr., ed. (1979; footnotes as well as page referen

… is from page 613 of the 2003 Liberty Fund collection, edited by Henry C. Clark, Commerce, Culture, and Liberty: Readings on Capitalism Before Adam Smith; specifically, it’s from the 1777 J. Justamond translation of Guillaume-Thomas-Fra

Adam Smith, former CFO and treasurer of medical supplies manufacturer Vante, riled people up today when he put up a video of himself bullying a Chick-fil-A drive-thru employee in Tucson on YouTube.Smith unsympathetically berates the worker in the vid

Perhaps it is worth a reminder that, while every effort by the Central-Banker-In-Chief and his political play-things to proclaim free-market omnipotence in stark contrast to the wholesale manipulation of any and every market and macro-economic lever

When my old, old friend Jerry Goodman (a.k.a. Adam Smith) called me with the news that Barton Biggs had died quite suddenly, I flashed back in time to the good old days when Wall Street was a backwater community of relics left over from 1929.

Let Us Have a Constitutional Moment Here, Nino... - Brad DeLong Tyler Cowen thinks he has a gotcha - Crooked Timber QOTD: Adam Smith on Banking - The Big Picture German economists say 'no' to euro banking union - chicagotribune.com...

It was as obvious 300 years ago as it is today: “Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from those rules, in consequence of

After listening to his litany of economic excuses, it's clear the president's reading list should include Adam Smith.

Adam Smith, a former portfolio manager at the Galleon Group hedge fund who provided the government with crucial assistance in prosecuting his onetime boss, Raj Rajaratnam, avoided prison on Tuesday when a judge sentenced him to two years' probation.

It pays to be a government informant and Adam Smith's sentence shows how far you can go to break the law but still recover by being an informant in an important such as the one against Raj Rajaratnam.

Last week, we pointed out one of the defining characteristics of our imbalanced economy:Corporate profit margins just hit a record-highWages just hit a record-lowThe juxtaposition of these two facts perfectly illustrates the fundamental problem with

Gavin Kennedy continues to fight against cartoonish mis-representations of what Adam Smith actually said and believed: Adam Smith and the Myth of Laissez Faire, by Gavin Kennedy: ...Let us be clear: Adam Smith did not use the words “Laissez-faire�