In the endless negotiations about Greece’s approach to bankruptcy, EU leaders suggested last week that a “fund of experts” might take over $200 billion or more worth of Greek state assets, with a view to speeding their privatization and repaying much of Greece’s staggering debt load. The idea has some merit, as it reverses the […]

My apologies, first, for the hiatus in columns last week – I was moving from Vienna, VA., a suburb of Washington DC to Poughkeepsie NY, a semi-suburb (it’s 73 miles away) of New York. Many have clearly regarded this as an eccentric choice, and much of the motivation stems from things like hating the Washington […]

A few weeks ago, I compared Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to the Weimar Republic central banker Rudolf von Havenstein. The comparison looks even better after the Fed’s non-performance April 27 and the markets’ subsequent response. Even the more cautious members of the general media are beginning to compare the current outlook to that of the […]

The publicity surrounding the “Atlas Shrugged” movie got me to thinking again about the central premise in the book. For those who have not read it, Ayn Rand’s book postulates that all the entrepreneurs and people of great ability withdraw their services from the U.S. economy, retreating to an undiscovered mountain valley in the Rockies […]