For the first time in more than a decade, the European Central Bank (ECB) raised its key interest rate this past Thursday. The deposit facility rate went from –0.5 to 0.0 percent. The change comes after fourteen months of price inflation in the European Union above the ECB’s 2 percent target.

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. - Milton Friedman

Not only does Milton’s quote hold true in times of dire crisis, but worse, programs expand with even less scrutiny and oversight.

Jeff Deist: Welcome, Dr. Smith. I know you are a University of Oklahoma alum and your surgery center is in Oklahoma City. Are you an Oklahoma native?

Keith Smith: Yes, I am. I was born in Tulsa and lived in the Southeast corner, in the Southwest corner, and ended up right in the middle.

JD: Do you think being a Midwesterner informed your worldview or your medical career?

Even amidst plenty of bad news, quiet revolutions happen all around us.

No American industry is more ripe for disruption than medicine. Americans are addled; sick, overweight, mentally unwell, and dependent on too many prescription drugs. The business of “healthcare” is dominated by government—Medicare—and “private” insurance company middlemen, and it is in big trouble. Premiums and out-of-pocket costs now average $23,000 per year for a family of four. And the most expensive group of insureds, those over age sixty-five, are set to double in number by 2050.

In many cultures, profit is seen as the result of individuals exploiting other individuals. Profits, however, have nothing to do with exploitation. Instead, they reflect the actions of entrepreneurs who supply consumers in the most efficient ways with valued products.

For an entre­preneur to make profits, he must correctly antici­pate consumer preferences, the future prices of products and the future prices of the factors of production. Entrepreneurs who excel in their forecasting of future prices make profits, and those that misjudge future prices will suffer losses.

Robert Kagan is one of the most vigorous supporters of an “ideological” American foreign policy. America, in his view, should extend the blessings of liberal democracy worldwide, and in doing so, we necessarily act as a hegemonic power in the present circumstances—not, he hastens to add, so that we can for selfish motives dominate the world but rather to ensure the spread and maintenance of a liberal world order.