Venezuela’s socialist government has beset the population with all sorts of terrible travesties, from high inflation to shortages of toilet paper. Now the country’s poor citizens have one more shortage to grapple with: breast implants. Apparently the country’s restrictive currency controls have hindered physicians from buying approved implants.

Common wisdom would purport that those on the so-called “right” are and have always been hawkish and pro-war, while those on the proverbial “left” have always been the tree-hugging, peacenik, anti-war folks. For many conservatives, unfortunately, this is more or less correct. However, progressives have once again airbrushed their own past, which is about as anti-war as, well, war.

Disease pandemics are a dream come true for central planners. Hysterical over possible contagion, citizens clamor for government action, government quarantines, government coercion, and government planning. In these cases, large numbers of people want government to do what government does best: seize people and property, coerce, issue orders, and spend lots of money. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control presents itself as the answer to every pandemic.

There are strong indications that the remarkable run up of asset prices  in the last few years is beginning to run out of steam and may be on the verge of collapse.  We will leave aside the question of whether the phenomenon is a garden-variety inflationary boom or has already become a bubble in which prices are rising today simply because buyers anticipate that they will rise tomorrow.

Back in the 1980s, Irwin Schiff, anti-tax activist, political prisoner, and father of free-market pundit Peter Schiff, wrote a marvelous comic book titled How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn’t, which teaches economic principles through a light-hearted story.

Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy — and What We Can Do About It, by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames, McGrawHill, 2014

Amidst news of the prolonged worldwide recession, new air strikes, secession attempts, and climate change, international trade — which in 2008 went through its largest crisis in history — has been mostly out of the public eye. Yet we’ve been told not to fear: the World Trade Organization, the foremost global body for promoting multilateral trade, remains watchful, and is optimistic that efforts for liberalization will bear fruit in the near future.

Through the years, Bernard Madoff, the convicted ponzi schemer who defrauded his investors, “generously” donated millions of dollars to charity — cancer research, hospitals, theaters, schools, and more. At least one of these charitable organizations invested with Mr. Madoff, where the invested funds disappeared.