Would you like for the bank to give you a check each month for your mortgage interest payment rather than you paying the bank interest?

As mad as that question seems, the fact is that some homeowners in Denmark are now receiving checks each month because their mortgages have negative (below zero) interest rates. A negative interest rate is the situation in which the lenders pay you to borrow money from them.

A number of central banks now have negative interest rates, including Japan, the European Central Bank, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and others — all done in the hope of increasing inflation (which is more madness). The chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve has said she is not ruling out negative interest rates.

Negative, zero or very low interest rates encourage people to buy much more expensive homes than they normally would, which is to their benefit until interest rates rise. Despite stagnant economies many European cities are experiencing a rapid rise in home prices largely because of low interest rate policies. This real estate bubble cannot be sustained, so at some point it is going to all come crashing down.

The “Panama Papers” uproar has caused the predictable calls for more financial transparency. Even if you are a person of modest means, do you want the government to know everything about your spending habits? Folks in government will always assure the people that any personal information — income, tax and health records — will be kept totally secret. But that is a lie.

Over the last couple of years, the innermost secrets of the U.S. government, involving national defense, personnel and IRS records have all been hacked or stolen. Far too often, those in government use sensitive information for their own purposes or for general citizen abuse and even blackmail.

To quote the British writer and barrister, Stanley Brodie, “The idea that everyone’s tax and financial affairs, assets and wealth should be open to inspection by the world at large only has to be stated for its absurdity to be seen.”

The “Panama Papers” revelations have caused many to attack “shell” companies. Most all companies begin as “shell companies,” meaning they have few real assets or operations. Some become giant corporations, some become proper vehicles for investment and productive uses, and a few are used for illegal purposes.

Cars, homes, boats, planes, businesses and government agencies can be used for proper and legal activities or, in the hands of bad people, can be used for criminal purposes. If we banned everything that is used for destructive purposes, we would all be lying naked in a cave without sticks or stones.

The fact is the world cannot function without a high degree of confidentiality, including financial confidentiality.

Endless cruelties have been and continue to be committed on the basis of group slander.

The communists and socialists imprisoned and slaughtered many of their merchant and property-owning citizens on the basis of a gross slander, not to mention what the Nazis did to the Jews. In America, blacks, gays, many ethnic groups and women were first stereotyped, then slandered, and then discriminated against.

But the fashion of which groups of individuals can be slandered has changed to such people as Wall Street bankers; pharmaceutical, coal and oil company executives; conservative scholars; those who question the global warming establishment; and white males, among others.

The general rule that one is innocent until proven guilty goes back at least to ancient Roman law: Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat — “Burden of proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies.”

Over the centuries, not only individuals, but whole classes of people, have been denied this basic human right. The oppressors normally begin by slandering a group, and then use the slander to discriminate and ultimately persecute — and, unfortunately, this persists even in America.  Let’s take Bernie Sanders as a prime example.

Back in 1955, the islands of Puerto Rico, Cuba and Hong Kong had roughly the same real per capita income. They each took very different economic paths.

Now, some 60 years later, Hong Kong is even richer than the United States on a per capita income basis. Cuba is an economic disaster, having gone from the richest Caribbean nation to the poorest, next to Haiti. And Puerto Rico finds itself flirting with bankruptcy, with a per capita income much higher than Cuba’s but only roughly half that of Hong Kong.

The contrasting lessons of Hong Kong and Cuba provide a clear path that Puerto Rico must take to have an economic future.

Berlin, Germany.  Even though the Berlin Wall was destroyed more than a quarter-century ago and the city rebuilt, new propaganda wars are being waged here and elsewhere by the major and some minor powers in a more sophisticated way than the Soviets ever imagined.

Disinformation has always been a staple of states and spies, but now the world’s airways are being swamped with state-controlled TV “news” stations. Of the 83 TV channels I have access to in my hotel room, roughly 32 of the 51 non-German channels are largely owned or controlled by various governments.

This includes the Russian, Chinese, Qatar (Al Jazeera), Thai, Vietnamese, Armenian, Turkish, and Cuban governments. The Russian, Chinese, Qatar, Japanese and French governments have full-time English-language channels here in Berlin, clearly designed to reach an audience outside of their home-country nationals who may be living in or visiting Berlin.

These are almost entirely commercial-free channels, paid for by the taxpayers of their respective countries, and are now found in most major cities in the world, at some considerable cost. The question is: Why are they doing it?

Do you support free speech? How about free speech for climate change skeptics? For homophobes? For racists? For sexists? For white males? For even Donald Trump?

Those who defend free speech, as did the American Founding Fathers, understand it is not about defending speech you agree with, but defending speech you disagree with. Without free speech, there is no liberty.

The State Department diversity officer, John Robinson, has just warned the staff that they may be penalized for engaging in "microaggressions," which include jokes or other comments that someone who hears them may find offensive.

In a recent letter, he referred to a definition of microaggressions as "everyday verbal, nonverbal and environmental slights, snubs or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory or negative messages to target persons." In other words, whatever you hear may be considered a microaggression if you choose to be offended.

Such vague and infinitely elastic laws and regulations are the bread and butter of all totalitarian regimes.

The presidential candidates have been decrying the real stagnation in income over the last seven years. People are unhappy but are not rioting in the streets. Why aren’t they?

Because despite wage stagnation, most people are living much better. How can that be? It is because those reviled capitalists all over the world are creating more and better goods and services at lower cost, and in doing so improving everyone’s real standard of living, well-being and happiness.

There are now 2.6 billion smart phones in the world — a product that is less than 20 years old. The Apple iPhone is only 10 years old, but it has changed the world.

Some economists have calculated that 20 years ago, if one had to buy all of the devices that do what iPhone apps can do, it would have cost much more than $3 million (that does not include those features that could not have been bought at any price two decades ago because the technology did not exist).

And that’s only the start of an endless succession of million dollar gifts capitalism has bestowed upon each of us.

If a member of Congress told you that he was going to use some of your hard-earned tax dollars to support an international organization that demands that you pay higher taxes, what would you say?

Unfortunately, the question is not hypothetical, because that is exactly what is now happening. Congress is giving more than $70 million a year to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which has morphed over the last two decades from an organization that promoted trade and growth policies to an organization that pushes for higher taxes, which will reduce economic growth.

Meanwhile, the organization’s officials and lobbyists in Washington undertook an active campaign to wine and dine members of Congress and other agents of influence in order to preserve the funding they obtain from U.S. taxpayers, which accounts for about 25 percent of the OECD budget.

Here’s how we’ve been sold out for the cost of a nice lunch.

This past week, a majority of the members of the Supreme Court gave notice that there is a limit to how much of their and Congress’ power they will allow the executive branch to grab.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been expanding its own definitions of what it is able to do under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court, in essence, said enough is enough when it put a stay on the EPA’s initiative to limit carbon emissions from power plants, in response to suits brought by several dozen states and industry groups. This was just one of several recent defeats of the EPA by the courts.

The tragic loss of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did, at least, ignite a discussion of the proper way to interpret the Constitution and may cause the next president to pick more justices who respect liberty. As Justice Scalia once noted: “There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.”

The American Founders created three branches of government — the legislative, judicial and executive — to serve as checks and balances on each other in order to limit the abuse of the people by those in government.

The Founders also created America as a federal constitutional republic and not as a democracy. This distinction, which too few Americans understand, is what preserves our liberties, even though many have been eroded.

What does a "progressive" stand for? How does this differ from what a liberal, conservative or libertarian stands for?

More so than in most years, the presidential candidates are debating about labels. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders got into an argument last week about what a progressive is, and Mrs. Clinton enlightened everyone by telling us "the root of that word, progressive, is progress."

There are two conflicting philosophical views as to the proper role of government. One sees the role of the state to protect the individual from the transgressions of others, while at the same time protecting the individual from the state in order to ensure individual liberty.

The other view is that the function of government is to protect the collective, and to directly provide for individual needs.

Correctly said, there is an endless struggle between "libertarians" and "statists."

A major reason for the growing distrust of government is the double standard whereby government officials and employees often suffer no consequences from incompetence, misbehavior and even criminal violations of the law.

In the common law, there is a general principle that if a person is damaged by the actions of others through negligence or illegal behavior, he or she has a right to redress.

The actions of government officials and employees are often far more damaging than those in the private sector, but they are protected by “sovereign immunity” and civil service protections.

Sovereign immunity is a “legal doctrine by which the sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution.” It comes from the ancient concept that the “king can do no wrong.”

Since we don’t have kings in America, one way to get rid of much corruption and criminal malfeasance by government bureaucrats would be to substantially get rid of sovereign immunity. Let’s take what’s happened in Flint, Michigan as an example.

Do you know what socialism is? Hillary Clinton struggled to find an answer when recently asked.

Socialism is a system in which the government owns or controls the means of production, and allocates resources and rewards.

Sen. Bernie Sanders proudly proclaims himself a “democratic socialist.” Many in the Democratic Party seem to have no problem with this and, in fact, are embracing him and his ideas.

America -- and its unique success as a nation -- was built around individual liberty and opportunity, not collective coercion. All too many no longer understand what the American Founders were trying to, and largely did, achieve. It is a tragedy that too few Americans understand the dangers of unlimited government.

The young people who support Mr. Sanders, and even Hillary, seem to be generally ignorant of why America worked. Many do not want the government to restrict unfettered abortions or their right to smoke pot, but seem to be oblivious that socialism and big government makes everyone into an economic slave.

There will be a recession in the United States and much of the rest of the world in 2016.

After reading the above sentence, you should be thinking, what possibly could the writer know that the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration do not know given all their resources and all of their professional economic forecasters?

If one looks at the forecast record of the IMF and the Fed over the past several decades, one will not find any case in which a year of positive growth was followed by a year of contraction in which the IMF or Fed anticipated the recession in April of the growth year.

Given the evidence, economic forecasting is far from an exact science, and forecasters and model-builders have much to be modest about. In fact, I do not know for certain that my opening sentence is true or not, but the following is my case for why my assertion is more likely to be true than the various official forecasts. There’s a quartet of reasons.

Do you know what type of person the various presidential candidates would appoint to the Supreme Court?

The next president is likely to be able to pick several Supreme Court justices, and those decisions will influence the direction of the American republic for decades in the future.

Despite the fact that we have had numerous "debates" between the candidates, we still know little about their governing philosophies. It would be helpful if the moderators for this Thursday's debate (1/14) delved more deeply into the way they would conduct themselves as president than just asking questions about current events or what they think about the other candidates.

Here are some real questions the moderators could ask instead of gotchas.

Those who have not studied economics often rely on the press, who are often equally ignorant of economics and, hence, are unable to differentiate between sense and nonsense. While The Wall Street Journal (and particularly the editorial page) normally gets it right, The New York Times and many other newspapers too often let political bias get in the way of the facts.

It is particularly disappointing when a former great newsmagazine, The Economist, allows very sloppy reporting and analysis on serious economic topics. This week, The Economist published an article, “Indecent Disclosure” (1/02) describing tax reform proposals of the Republican candidates as “exorbitant,” putting forth “hugely expensive” plans before “accounting for economic effects.”

The whole point of tax reform is to reduce the economic drag of the current US tax code -- which The Economist correctly describes as “a mess.”

But the article implies that higher tax rates will always bring in more revenue (which they appear to view as desirable) and lower tax rates will bring in less revenue. For very low rates that is true, but for high rates, it is false.

The chance of dying in a terrorist attack in any year in the United States is less than one in a million (even including the terrible attack of the approximately 3,000 killed on Sept. 11, 2001).

Many in the media over-hype the chances of dying in a terrorist attack while at the same time underestimating the number of potential terrorists and terrorist cells among us. At times like these, it is important to be rational about relative risks and prudent in mitigating them.

Most people have little understanding of the relative risks of dying when using various forms of transportation. Commercial airlines are by far and away the safest form of transit per passenger mile. In fact, you are about 62 times safer in an airplane than an automobile for a long-distance trip.

What most people have even less understanding of is the relative risks to our freedom that Washington bureaucrats and politicians create compared to those of Islamic terrorists. The former, it turns out, is far greater.

When you hear politicians speak (the president or members of Congress) and they tell you that the science or facts are settled, do you tend to believe them or treat their comments with skepticism?

Those who survey such things show that faith in government and politicians has fallen to record lows. But many other professions have also seen a decline in public trust.

The government produces a "food pyramid" and dietary guidelines telling us what is good for us to eat and what is not. But it keeps changing -- eggs and whole milk were bad, and now they are good.

Global warming alarmists keep telling us the science is settled -- but doomsday keeps being pushed back. Not one of the major global warming models predicted the recent 18-year pause in global warming. Is it any wonder most of us now ignore the constant warnings of warming by Mr. Obama?

Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Why has Honduras lagged behind its neighbors and much of the rest of the world?

It is resource-rich, has deep-water ports both on the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, is very scenic and, because of its mountain terrain, has sub-climates that meet most people’s preferences.

As can be seen in this table, Honduras compares poorly with neighboring countries and some other countries of similar size. Guatemala next door has a per capita income roughly 50 percent higher, Costa Rica three times higher, Chile five times higher, and Switzerland and Hong Kong about 12 times higher than Honduras’.

Honduras lags and suffers because of the lack of the rule of law and economic freedom. Now, a highly innovative program based on free market capitalist principles is being launched to come to the rescue of Honduras.

Do not expect to get a higher real rate of interest on your savings — ever. Traditionally, people could expect to receive 2 or 3 percent more than the rate of inflation on their savings or money market accounts.

For instance, if inflation was 2 percent, many people received 5 percent interest per year on their government-insured savings accounts. The IRS would then tax the entire amount of interest received. So, even after inflation and taxes, most received a small, 1.5 to 2 percent real positive rate of return on their savings.

Contrast the current situation with what people traditionally expected. Now, if you are lucky, you may be receiving a half percent or so interest rate, about equal to the rate of inflation, yet the IRS still taxes you on this meager amount even though you have had no real interest income. So, at the end of the year, you are worse off — a negative return — because you did the responsible thing, and that was to save for your retirement or for various emergencies that come along with life.

The following is a simplified but accurate description of how we got into the mess and why the situation will not get better ...

Whatever happened to "no taxation without representation"?

Are you aware that the American government has been slowly giving away its power to international bureaucrats to determine how its businesses and citizens are taxed?

Most wars do not turn out the way the people who started them intended. Setting aside the hot military wars, look at the consequences of the “war on drugs” and the “war on money laundering and tax evasion.” The global war on money laundering and tax evasion has failed in the three decades since it began in earnest, and it is now on its way to undermining the rule of law around the world, the legitimate role of financial institutions, and the right of sovereign governments to determine their own tax policies.

The new anti-money-laundering laws and regulations have resulted in millions of Americans who live abroad and others living outside their home countries being unable to get bank accounts and other financial services in the countries where they live.

Ultimately, if you continue to spend more than you take in -- whether you are an individual, business or government -- there will be a day of reckoning. Puerto Rico is likely to reach that day by December 1st.

Back in June, the governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, announced that the government debt of $73 billion had grown so large that it was no longer "repayable." At that time, many of us who have had experience with countries in fiscal crisis made recommendations (see my America's Greece) to avoid what is now almost certain to happen.

As is its pattern, the Obama administration waited until the last minute -- this past week -- to unveil its "solution," dubbed "Super Chapter 9." Chapter 9 is a provision in the U.S. bankruptcy code that allows local governments in U.S. states, but not the states themselves (including Puerto Rico), to declare bankruptcy.

Typically, this “solution” will make the problem worse rather than solving it.  The causes of Puerto Rico’s problems are clear – and so are the remedies.  Here they are.

If Hillary Clinton were to be elected president, what economic policies would she propose and what would be the effect on the economy? To try to get an answer, I have looked at her statements, her campaign website, and her Senate record.

Mrs. Clinton has recognized the major economic problem of slow growth and stagnant incomes, and her economic platform is called, “A plan to raise American incomes.”

Unfortunately, the plan is largely a list of feel-good statements with very little specificity and contains nothing that would have a major positive impact on economic growth. (In fact, some of the proposals, such as increasing the minimum wage and overtime rules, would be negatives).

So let’s take a look at what she has done, not what she says.

Grand Cayman. Government is supposed to make life better for people — particularly the poor — but the U.S. and European governments are increasing the misery of the poor.

In the popular culture, Cayman is viewed as place were tax evaders and money launderers put their wealth. The truth is quite different in that most money laundering takes place in the big financial centers like London and New York, not Cayman.

For many years, Cayman has had information exchange agreements with the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Treasury and the major European governments — so one would be very foolish to put money in a Cayman bank with the intent of not getting caught for tax evasion or money laundering.

Cayman is a high-income jurisdiction as a result of having a prosperous financial sector (having nothing to do with illegal activity), a vibrant tourist industry, and an increasingly diversified economy.

It also provides a good example of how the US government in collusion with others is increasing the misery of the poor in countries around the world.

Are you aware that there is an international effort to increase taxes, including those paid by Americans?

Next Monday (Oct. 5), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, based in Paris) will release its “final package of measures for a coordinated international approach to reform the tax system under the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project.”

In plain English, what the OECD bureaucrats are attempting to do is put in place minimum international corporate tax rates, and companies will be required to share sensitive and proprietary information with non-Americans who may misuse it.

The OECD started life several decades ago as a trade promotion and statistical organization created by the few big, rich nations. As bureaucracies tend to do, the OECD grew in number of members and engaged in “mission creep,” most notably becoming a lobbying organization — using taxpayer money — for those wanting higher taxes.

The OECD should be re-titled OMGTB, the Organization for Money-Grubbing Tax Bullying.

Tallinn, Estonia. Right now, Estonia is arguably the most advanced country in the world when it comes to use of the Internet and related technologies.

Estonia is a most improbable success, in that a mere quarter of a century ago it was still under domination of the Soviet Union as a very poor backwater on the Baltic Sea. Now it is a developed country and a member of both the EU and NATO.

Estonia has been the most successful of the former communist-controlled countries, in part because of excellent political leadership since independence, including the remarkable Mart Laar -- the father of the economic reform, who served as prime minister from 1992-1994, and again from 1999-2002.

The Estonians now have the rule of law, the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the EU, a balanced budget, free trade, and a flat-rate income tax -- all of which have led to their high economic growth and prosperity. Here’s how they did it – and why theirs is a country of the future.

Zurich, Switzerland — When you think of Switzerland what comes to mind?

Beautiful lakes surrounded by the Alps; a rich country with happy people; the home of milk chocolate, expensive watches and discrete bankers; a peaceful country that has not been at war in more than two centuries?

All that is true, and even more. Switzerland is at or near the top of almost every measure of a successful country, including the just released Human Freedom Index compiled by the Cato and Fraser Institutes, and others.

The world would be far better off if a majority of its countries were run like Switzerland. And in this way too: almost no one knows who the president of Switzerland is. Do you? That’s also something to emulate.

Would you vote for someone who you believe knowingly lies to you? The problem for the American people is that candidates from both parties lie on a regular basis, and so it is all too rare that a voter has a choice between someone who will honor his or her promises and someone who will not.

A substantial majority of the American people believe that Hillary Clinton is not a truth-teller — for very good reasons. The fables about Benghazi, her private email server, and the conflicts of interest with the Clinton Foundation are so transparent that only those who live in an alternative universe find her statements the least bit believable. Mrs. Clinton is only unusual among the Washington political class in that her fibs are so blatant and obvious.

More typical are the less-obvious broken promises of many Republicans.

Would you call yourself a “socialist”? Webster’s dictionary defines socialism as “a theory or system of social organization which advocates the vesting of ownership and control of the means of production, capital, land, etc. in the community as a whole.”

Modern-style socialism was born during the French Revolution — with the Conspiracy of Equals. In his classic work “Heaven on Earth” about the rise and fall of socialism, Joshua Muravchik, wrote: “Once empowered, socialism refused to yield its promised rewards. The more dogged the effort to achieve it, the more the outcome mocked the humane ideals it proclaimed. Yet for a century and a half, no amount of failure dampened socialism’s appeal. Then suddenly like a rocket crashing to earth, it all collapsed. Within a couple of decades, socialism was officially repealed in half the places where it had triumphed. In the other half, it continued in name only.”

It was an ideology that claimed ...

President Obama says we should trust the Iranians to do self-inspections and not to cheat on the nuclear deal. Hillary Rodham Clinton says we should trust her when she tells us that she had only deleted personal emails from her private server and did not send or receive any classified emails. I cannot think of anyone I know (who is not in government) whom I would trust less than Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton.

The reason I trust people in the private sector more than I trust people in government is that most often those in the private sector who lie, cheat and steal, or just make honest mistakes, can be held accountable, while those in the public sector who do the same often can get away with a simple, lame "I am sorry" at best.

When the folks at BP were involved in an unintentional oil spill, the company was fined $54 billion, and the top executive, Tony Hayward, as well as many others in the company were, in essence, fired.

When the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) was involved in an unintentional spill, heavily polluting a river in Colorado with dangerous heavy metals a couple of weeks back, Gina McCarthy, EPA administrator, had nothing to say but "sorry."

What is the purpose of financial regulation?

Advocates of more and more financial regulation say it is necessary to protect the consumer against greedy bankers and other financial professionals and institutions. The latest power grab is the Labor Department’s “Conflict of Interest Rule.”

The awful irony is that every day, government fails in its fiduciary responsibility to spend taxpayer money wisely. If the administration spent more time making sure that the Veterans Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the IRS and others are well managed and not corrupt, rather than taking on a largely non-problem and turning it into one, Americans would be better off.

The Labor Dept’s power grab is as if a guy from the mafia comes and tells you that for a big fee, he is going to protect you from the carwash overcharging you.

“American, single-handedly, saves 600 African antelopes and 12 baby elephants — by killing a lion.”

As you read the first part of the previous sentence, you most likely are thinking “this is a good guy.” But when you read the last part of the sentence — particularly if you are a cat lover — you may be thinking “this is a bad guy.”

Adult lions on average eat about 15 pounds of meat a day. In the wild, they feed primarily on medium-size animals, such as antelopes and occasional baby elephants.

The late Cecil the lion, killed by the American dentist, was reported to be about 13 years old. Cecil probably consumed roughly 70,000 pounds of meat during his life, which likely included many hundreds of antelopes and baby elephants.

When you see a wildlife movie where a lion is chasing an antelope, do you root for the lion or the antelope? Even if you are a cat lover, how many antelopes do you think should die to feed one lion?

A study by the Royal Astronomical Society, published in Science Daily on July 9, concludes that solar activity will be exceptionally diminished in the decade of 2030-40 as it was during the Maunder minimum of 1645-1715, a period of sharply lower temperatures known as the "Little Ice Age."

Lower temperatures would be far more damaging than moderate global warming, because agricultural production could be greatly reduced. Note: there are many scientists who think changes in solar output, and/or changes in cloud cover can easily swamp changes in CO2 levels in affecting the earth's temperature.

New satellite data, reported in Nature Geoscience on July 20, shows that Arctic Sea ice has now bounced back to levels last seen in the 1980s when modern measurements began. At the same time, southern sea ice around the Antarctic has grown to a thirty-year high from when it first began to be measured. Climate scientists admit that their models cannot account for the rise in sea ice.

By the way, did not Al Gore tell us the Arctic Ocean would be free of sea ice by the summer of 2007?

What recourse does a citizen have when government employees violate the law and do harm, and then they are protected by the government? Our federal Government was created to protect person and property and ensure liberty, but it has increasingly become the abuser rather than the protector.

If the government will not act to protect the citizens from government officials, what can be done? One action is to take the government to court as organizations as do the Institute for Justice and Judicial Watch. But that is a long and costly process

So in addition to calling for help from these fine organizations, here’s a suggestion to take matters in your own hands.