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 […]