With the French election’s first round and the revelations about the Target-2 payments system, the euro’s prognosis worsened sharply this week. Having generally been a supporter of the euro, provided Britain didn’t have to join, I now think flaws in its design and poor policy choices have made it a disaster in waiting. Markets were […]

The French presidential election on April 22 and May 6 is important not only to France; on it rests the future of the euro. Spain, about which the markets have been agonizing for the last few weeks, is merely a sideshow; it has only moderate levels of international debt and could at a pinch be […]

According to economic historian Angus Maddison, Latin America had six among the world’s 30 richest economies in 1900. Today the continent’s richest country, by purchasing power parity GDP per capita, is Argentina, at No. 55, according to the IMF. Yet the continent is not short of natural resources, not overpopulated, and avoided the catastrophic carnage […]

The common assumption among policymakers is that, in order to maintain its higher living standards against emerging markets competition, the United States must invest more in higher education. To achieve this, the government has instituted a massive student loan guarantee program, with over $1 trillion outstanding and an average of $25,000 in debt for every […]

The U.S. Department of Defense budget was $680 billion in the year to September 2012. The Environmental Protection Agency’s budget was only $17 billion. Yet when you compare the cost to the U.S. and global economy of the two departments, the comparison reverses. With modern rules of engagement and care for civilian populations, and politicians’ […]