Diverted Funds

Watchdog groups are correct to monitor the disbursement of the Red Cross’s September 11 donations. And the issue of appropriate uses of charitable funds promoted for a particular purpose must be addressed. But the same issue should be raised about innumerable government initiatives whose claimed goals are also undermined by the same diversion of resources.

Who Owes What To Whom?

Successful people who earn their wealth through free and peaceful exchange may choose to give some of it away, but they’d be no less moral and no less debt-free if they gave away nothing. It cheapens the powerful charitable impulse that all but a few people possess to suggest that charity is equivalent to debt service or that it should be motivated by any degree of guilt or self-flagellation.

The Power of Gold

Gold is the antidote to inflationary money. Gold, its advocates have said through the centuries, protects an individual against the damage caused by the disease called inflation that is created by central banks. Gregory Bresiger reviews Peter Bernstein’s attempt to debunk: The Power of Gold: History of an Obsession.

The Limits of Mathematics

Athletics, like economics, is an endeavor of human action. While we can see scores and statistics, there is no true way to quantify how good or bad a team may be. Indeed, if the computer polls with their mathematical formulas were so accurate and useful, then one would hardly see the need for a championship game after all.

Irony Survives

In the weeks immediately following the World Trade Center and Pentagon disasters, commentators were quick to predict in apocalyptic terms that television and movies would never be the same again. It is still too early, however, to tell whether there really has been a sea-change in the American psyche. Paul Cantor explains.

The Law of the Ratchet

It comes as no surprise that governments spend more money and regulate more actively during crises--wars and economic bailouts are expensive and complicated. But a more active government also attracts opportunists, who perceive that a national emergency can serve as a useful pretext for achieving their own objectives.

Miracle or Mirage?

The Great American Boom may be over, but the construction of myths about its nature and why it has ended has just begun. The International Monetary Fund blames the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank for not having opened the floodgates of money at full. Other Keynesians put the blame on the consumer, who is seen as neglecting his duty of keeping on shopping.

Bloating AmeriCorps

AmeriCorps is little more than social work tinged with messianic delusions. Citizens should no longer be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes each year for a bunch of photo opportunities for politicians and do-gooders.