The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development ended its recent confab in Brazil with pious warnings that limited access to new information technology is a major impediment to closing the income gap between rich and poor nations. This is…
It’s difficult to withdraw from financial addiction
News about subsidies for airlines and the U.S. cotton industry illustrate how addictive unsustainable or indefensible flows of money turn out to be. Once a company, group or economic sector becomes used to above-market income of some type, stopping the…
Lessons for confronting monopolies
The U.S. government may be learning a lesson in dealing with monopolies that smaller nations such as Canada and the Netherlands have known for years. That is if the opinions of Air Force Secretary James Roche make it past the…
Presidential pressure on the Fed
De mortuis nil nisi bonum. The Latin injunction to speak nothing but good of the dead is sound advice. It should not justify, however, the complete falsification of history. That is what former Reagan economic adviser William Niskanen tried to…