Global Economy

Copy Japan! was the cry of the 1980s. That country, economically speaking, appeared to have it all: an industrial policy that knew good and bad investments before markets themselves did, a disciplined workforce, and, most of all, an unshakable banking system in which everyone had confidence.

Surveying the present wreckage, it's hard to believe these banks were once the envy of moneylenders worldwide. Now they have a reputation no better than the U.S. public school system.

Newt Gingrich claims that "Alvin and Heidi Toffler have given us the key to viewing current disarray within the positive framwork of a dynamic, exciting future" .

In the Clinton administration's spin control on the Mexican meltdown, Nafta had nothing to do with it. Without the treaty, matters would have been worse, the White House says, and now Nafta will help Mexico recover.

When discussing the secession of Quebec from the Rest of Canada (ROC), many Anglo-Canadian economists become doomsday preachers of apocalyptic scenarios. They predict social calamities such as poverty, mass unemployment, civil war, and mass exodus.

They should settle down, try to be rational, and focus on the only real issue: the long-term economic well-being of Quebecois and Canadians.

Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn's return to Russia has engendered more than the usual amount of scaremongering. The author, we are told, is a Pan-Slavic nationalistic and religious fanatic whose views are outdated and irrelevant. Yet Solzhenitsyn used his first speech and press conference in Russia to promote two economic ideas that can actually move Russia forward: private property and free enterprise.

The debate over whether or to what extent we should bail out Gorby ($10 billion? $50 billion? $100 billion? Over how many years?) has almost universally been couched in false and misleading terms. The underlying concept seems to be that the United States government has, through some divine edict, become the wise and benign parent of Gorby/the Soviet Union, which, in its turn, has for most of its career been a wild and unruly kid, but a kid that is now maturing and showing signs of taking its place as a responsible member of the family.

Governments have always intervened in the economy, but today's State—armed with modern data collection as well as an interventionist ideology—has taken us to a new level of regulation and taxation.

He had been widely touted by the American media as the savior of Peru from hyperinflation and from the dangers posed by the current socialistic Garcia regime as well as the fanatical Maoist-type guerrillas who call themselves "The Shining Path." Mario Vargas Llosa, tall, aristocratic, eminent avant-garde novelist and ex-leftist, was running for president of Peru.

Under the surface, Poland is seething with anti-government ferment. And the works of Ludwig von Mises and his students are part of the reason—testimony once again to the potency of truth.