President Bill Clinton’s favorite freedom fighter just got indicted for mass murder, torture, kidnapping, and other crimes against humanity. In 1999, the Clinton administration launched a 78-day bombing campaign that killed up to fifteen hundred civilians in Serbia and Kosovo in what the American media proudly portrayed as a crusade against ethnic bias. That war, like most of the pretenses of US foreign policy, was always a sham.

I have recently been reading Helen Zia’s Last Boat out of Shanghai, which presents a narrative history of a handful of refugees who fled Shanghai as the Communist Party took control of China in the late 1940s. In framing this flight from the city, Zia details the experiences of the refugees during the Japanese occupation during the Sino-Japanese War, as well as just after the Chinese Civil War.

Bank lending is contracting, and it is important to understand why. At this stage of the credit cycle, which began expanding following the aftermath of the Lehman crisis over a decade ago, a sharp contraction of bank credit to nonfinancials is normal. It is what drives periodic recessions, slumps, and depressions, and monetary stimulus by central banks is intended to help commercial bankers recover their mojo and resume lending.

During the postcolonial period, most of the African countries which had opted for socialism as their economic system also adopted protectionism as an economic measure to favor certain politically preferred industries.

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Joseph Schumpeter once observed, “capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets.” Capitalism is to be condemned no matter what, even if the executioners have yet to settle on the specific reason for its condemnation.

Samuel Scheffler is one of the most prominent contemporary moral and political philosophers. He is especially well known for his ability to come up with arguments and counterarguments to any position. He is also a committed egalitarian. In a recent column that appeared in the New York Times, Scheffler responds to an argument against equality of wealth, income, and other desirable social goods.

Some fair-weather friends of free trade have been rethinking their positions in the face of supposed Chinese economic weaponization of pharmaceuticals. They are now embracing managed trade instead. Why?

The intense pressure to politicize every aspect of academia will not spare economics, and why would it? A society willing to topple statues is hardly one to worry about pulling down a body of knowledge, especially one skillfully characterized by the Left as a political program rather than an actual social science. 

The peculiar consequences that result from government intervention are similar in all areas of economic and social life. Problems such as indifference, evaporating solidarity, irresponsibility, and short-term thinking are more than often caused or exacerbated by—sometimes well-intentioned—government interventions. This holds true for interventions in the financial world and in business, and it is no different with family policy.

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At the turn of the nineteenth century, classical economics—as represented by Adam Smith in Britain and Jean-Baptiste Say in France—seemed unassailable. The American Revolution, to many people, demonstrated the failures of the old economic order of mercantilism and colonialism.