Failure is a misnomer if we are referring to the human action involved in an entrepreneurial pursuit. A commonly held, although misleading notion, is that entrepreneurs often fail within the first few years in the marketplace. Often, I wonder why and how it happens that entrepreneurs fail only after a few years in the market if they envisioned a profitable opportunity where none had existed beforehand and was visually unapparent to others.

This time last year, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) had US stock holdings of $94 billion. The portfolio of Switzerland’s central bank has grown by $56 billion since, reporting ownership of $150 billion worth of US listed stocks as at Q1 2021.

Vaccine passports have been implemented, or are being developed, in a number of countries around the world. In February 2021, Israel introduced its “Green Pass,” which becomes “effective the week after receiving the second dose” of the vaccine and expires after six months. It was followed by China, which launched its digital “International Travel Health Certificate” in March.

Among the several misgivings non-anarcho-capitalist people might have with anarcho-capitalism, there is the issue of public goods. Public goods, in fact, are supposed to be those goods which free markets cannot efficiently supply and allocate because of two properties: non-rivalry, i.e., the fact that A’s consumption of (public) good X does not impair B’s consumption of it; and non-excludability, i.e., the fact that A, the owner of (public) good X, cannot prevent B from enjoying it as well.

The common thread that connects failed societies, from Weimar Germany to the Soviet Union, is an almost pathological insistence on denying reality. Weimar Germany denied that masses of printed money would destroy civilized society. The Soviet Union insisted that Soviet Man would emerge spontaneously from the ashes of capitalist society. Weimar Germany spawned Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany was completely destroyed, both physically and politically, by the World War II Allies.

After three months in a row of hitting new all-time highs, money supply growth slowed in March, dropping to a 10-month low. This slowdown, however, does not suggest any significant departure from the past year’s high growth in money supply—which came in the wake of unprecedented quantitative easing, central bank asset purchases, and various stimulus packages.

The Treasury department has issued its spending and revenue report for April 2021, and it’s clear the US government is headed toward another record-breaking year for deficits.