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 […]

The Indonesian tsunami tragedy, and its 150,000 casualties, reminds us fortunate Westerners that too many of the world’s people live in places and conditions that we would consider intolerable. The problem is not the world economy, it’s world population, which has doubled in the last 50 years. The Zero Population Growth campaign of the 1970s […]

“It has been counted and counted, weighed and divided” said the writing on the wall at the Biblical feast of the doomed Belshazzar. Sounds like an economic forecast to me, in particular one for the thoroughly unpleasant 2005 that seems likely to unfold.

Fannie Mae’s accounting mishaps, the renewed protest over stock option expensing and the attempt not to count the transition costs of social security reform all emphasize one thing: Washington DC, whether or not the world capital overall, is unquestionably the world capital of Ponzi financing schemes, swindles that work for a year or two and […]