When President Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, on October 11, 1987, it helped put into motion events that would dramatically change the global system. A line of communication was fully opened with an enemy of decades and substantive issues were on the table. Though the summit was initially reported as a failure, with the two sides unable to sign a final agreement, history now shows us that it was actually a great success that paved the way to the eventual end of the Cold War and a reduction in the threat of a nuclear war.

The First World War carries a special significance in the history of Austrian economics. It not only symbolized the triumph of militarism and nationalism over the all-too-brief flourishing of liberalism, but also sowed the seeds of fascism, socialism, and the Second World War that ultimately forced the emigration of the Austrians from their native country.

The well-known thesis of Max Weber regarding the intimate relationship between Calvinism and Capitalism has long been challenged by Western scholars yet has always found its proponents.

On the matter of immigration, Ron Paul suggested he’d like to see the green card system streamlined to make it easier to work legally in the US. Specifically, he has called for green cards that permit legal employment — and can be easily obtained by “illegal aliens” — but don’t grant political rights like access to welfare or the road to citizenship.

The recent collapse of the Argentine Peso and other emerging currencies is more than a warning sign.

Before Kitchen Confidential made him a celebrity, Anthony Bourdain was a real chef, working upscale New York kitchens at places like the Supper Club and Sullivan’s. Bourdain’s style is not to everyone’s taste, but he knows how to manage a restaurant crew. A chef, after all, is not primarily an artist, but a manager, facing the same set of organizational challenges — delegation, incentives, monitoring — as any administrator.

One of the most common fallacies of the new populists is to say that their model is the “Nordic” one and that those countries are successful examples of how “socialism works”. When I mentioned it to the Finnish Finance Minister Petteri Orpo at a recent ECR dinner, he could not believe it.

For most economists and commentators the main role of the Fed is to keep the supply and demand for money in equilibrium. Whenever an increase in the demand for money occurs — in order to maintain the state of equilibrium — it is held that the Fed must increase the money supply as a necessary action in order to keep the economy on a path of economic and price stability.