“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” So famously observed […]
Since the European Court of Justice has extended the mandate of the European Central Bank, it will be allowed to start a programme of quantitative easing. Economists and pundits are celebrating what the left wing medias in Europe have dubbed as a “victory” for monetary policy. It remains to be demonstrated whether an active monetary policy […]
The recent attacks in Paris against the well-known satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo, and a Jewish grocery store have been qualified as “Islamic terror”. This seems to me an hasty qualification, confusing the ideological label used by the criminals themselves and who they really were. Above all, they were criminals and nothing more. To proclaim, as […]
The dramatic recession in Russia and the brutal impoverishment of the Russian consumers after the fall of the Ruble is no accident. President Putin tries to save his face, his power and his national model by pretending that oil prices go up and down. He may be right to a certain extent but he does […]
When the British Prime Minister considers restricting the right granted to EU citizens to freely enter the United Kingdom, he is expressing without qualms a feeling shared by many Europeans. For some, immigrants – whatever country they may come from – are not welcome. Switzerland, perhaps, stands as an exception: Swiss voters have just rejected […]
The American economy is back, with a remarkable growth rate above 3% and an unemployment rate under 6%. Every political leader, central banker or economic pundit claims to be the one who vanquished the 2008 financial crisis. What if none of the above claimants played any role in the recovery? Looking at long trends in economic growth, […]
Why do poor people stay poor? In theory, we know how to go from misery to prosperity, thanks to a right combination of capital and work. We also know that this combination works best when handled by private entrepreneurs, watched over by a legitimate state. When, after the collapse of the Soviet pseudo-model, the whole […]
Chinese leaders who dismiss the Hong Kong protesters as spoilt children, unrepresentative of the people, have found an ally in some Western pundits. The same happened when Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 – the Beijing government disparaged this democratic intellectual as a stooge for introducing Western interests in China. Unfortunately […]
In the 1980s, Milton Friedman used to declare that the French economy was a mystery to him: “The French government gets everything wrong, and still the country is working”. He explained such a contradiction between a statist economic policy and a decent growth rate, by the extent of fraud and black market trade. Because taxes […]
History has proven that free market capitalism may be imperfect but it is undoubtedly more efficient than any alternative economic invention. Even after the 2008 financial crisis, no rational leader or enlightened economist suggests replacing the free market with socialism. Populist mavericks such as Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman advocate more regulation but are no […]
Among all major religions, Islam is the only one founded by a trader. According to the holy Quran (dictated by God himself to this prophet), profit is good as long the wealthy merchant redistributes a modest part of his acquired wealth to the poor. No idealization of poverty can be found in Islam, which makes […]
Since capitalism has become the world-wide economic model, billions of men and women have left mass poverty behind and lead lives unimaginable to their forebears. Under the influence of the likes of Adam Smith in the UK or Jean-Baptiste Say in France, capitalism had been known as the way towards the wealth of nations. Yet […]
