In the late 1990s, Latin America was believed to have adopted a “Washington Consensus” of democratic politics and moderately free market economics. At the end of 2005, it is becoming only too clear that the two parts of the Washington Consensus are in conflict in the region, with the democratic politics leading to increasingly anti-market […]

In 4th Century BC Syracuse, Damocles was the court sycophant who wished to change places with the wealthy tyrant Dionysius, and discovered that to do so involved having a sword suspended over his head by the finest of horsehairs, since Dionysius was in permanent danger of assassination. Likewise those who designed today’s U.S. economy sought […]

Europe has managed over the last half century to combine a higher level of government spending than the United States with a rate of economic growth that is still respectable and living standards that many “blue state” Americans envy. Regrettably, this party may be coming to an end.

In both the United States and Britain the 1980s were a decade of bold economic reform and revival that led to a generation of increasing (if overstated) prosperity. Regrettably, most of the reforms that changed the sluggish 1970s into the economically dynamic 1980s have since been reversed. Reversal of much of the increase in prosperity […]

Harlow H. Curtice, President of General Motors, was “Time” magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1955, the first businessman to receive that honor since Walter Chrysler in 1928, and the last until Ted Turner in 1991. Curtice presided over a U.S. economy that provided rapidly increasing living standards every year to the American people. One […]

The repeated and unconvincing assertions by General Motors Chief Executive Officer Robert Wagoner that the company is not going bankrupt have caused observers to bemoan the excessive costs of GM’s pension obligations or the evils of outsourcing, or to welcome the inevitable and welcome decline in U.S. manufacturing in a high-tech future. Would a GM […]

The Federal Reserve Board announced Thursday that from March 23, 2006 the Fed will cease publishing M3 money supply statistics. One thus wonders whether the U.S. political class has finally decided to hide economic failure by means of fraudulent accounting. Each new statistic would report stellar growth, with moderate inflation, increasing living standards and a […]

Successive meetings on oil at the American Enterprise Institute Wednesday and on the world’s monetary system at the Cato Institute Thursday brought the current problems with the world economy sharply into focus. There’s far too much money currently sloshing around the world, and not nearly enough oil. The combination of the two will make for […]

The “advance” estimate of third quarter Gross Domestic Product growth, released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis Friday, at 3.8 percent, was greeted by the stock market with a huge sigh of relief. It appeared to vindicate the view of market bulls and the George W. Bush administration that the U.S. economy remained in fine […]

President George W. Bush’s selection of his personal lawyer Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court has enthralled the blogosphere for three weeks, peeling off much of Bush’s support from the right. Yet Bush will soon make a selection with even more potential for good or ill in everybody’s lives: that of a successor to Fed […]