Japan bans U.S. beef. The United States bans Canadian beef. The EU subsidizes aircraft production. South Korea places multiple tariff barriers against automobile imports. The United States, the EU and Japan spend billions of dollars a year on farm subsidies, mostly paid to wealthy and corporate farmers. All these market distortions reduce output and trade, […]

“Thank you, Mr. Chamberlain,” caroled the musical British after prime minister Neville Chamberlain returned from signing the 1938 Munich Agreement. This week, as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress that Social Security and Medicare reform required cutting, not expanding, those out-of-control programs, one is tempted to echo their song. Hopefully with more long term […]

For anyone who DOESN’T think the stock and bond markets are currently hopelessly distorted, I recommend taking a long cold look at the hedge fund industry. It is a sobering spectacle.

The Institute for International Economics Tuesday held a seminar in which the domestic imperatives and the international imperatives for the U.S. trade agenda were examined separately. From the seminar, it became pretty clear that the potential deals that might benefit world trade and the world economy were not the ones that Congress was likely to […]

Late in 2001 I wrote a piece on Latin America “The darkening continent” that aroused considerable skepticism, since at that time Latin America was still thought to be a bastion of “neo-liberal” success. Several years later the continent has indeed darkened, but is it fated to continue doing so?

(published by United Press International, February 7, 2005.)

January 31, 2005

To a British ear, President George W. Bush’s Inaugural speech Thursday was quintessentially Wilsonian, but from not one but two Wilsons – Woodrow, messianic World War I president of the United States and Harold, dirigiste socialist 1960s British prime minister. Woodrow’s faith in the ability of the United States to solve all problems abroad was […]

The “reform” of social security is supposed to be necessary because in 2038 the Social Security Trust Fund runs out, after which retirees will have to suffer a 28% benefit cut. Big deal – they’ve got 33 years to prepare for it. Much better to suffer that than the trial balloon “reform” floated by Senator […]

The European Union’s first expansion to Eastern Europe last May — 10 countries with a total population of 74 million — seems to be working. Its second, due in 2007, to Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia, is too small (34 million) to cause major problems. However, its newly envisioned third expansion, to Turkey and Ukraine, may […]