End the IMF

The sex scandal involving the recently departed International Monetary Fund chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn—criminal or not—was never a reason to abolish the agency. But then we didn’t need another reason. The agency, centerpiece of J. M. Keynes’s inflationary Bretton Woods brainchild, should never have been created in the first place, since it was another calculated step toward [...]

Roots of Egypt’s Revolt

Egypt has been a pressure cooker for decades. Like others in the region, the Mubarak regime was sitting atop a simmering political crisis, simultaneously attempting to contain rising Islamist violence and snuff out pockets of political resistance. The country has been under a continuous state of emergency since the assassination of Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat, [...]

Orient Express to Hell

In 1986 and 1987 I slipped behind the Iron Curtain a few times to study economic perversity and political slavery. In November 1987 I flew into Hungary before heading on to the most repressive regime in Europe. The train from Budapest to Bucharest, Romania, was called the Orient Express. The original Orient Express began in [...]

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

By Jeffrey D. Sachs Reviewed by Jude Blanchette

Book Reviews – June 2006

The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly — reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling

The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein — reviewed by Gary M. Galles

Water for Sale: How Business and the Market Can Resolve the Worlds Water Crisis by Fredrik Segerfeldt — reviewed by George C. Leef

Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity by James Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, and Dwight R. Lee — reviewed by Tom Lehman

Psychiatric Services

The standard political-philosophical justification for the state is the need of the community for protection from criminals at home and enemies abroad. The community is now believed to be threatened by another group as well: the mentally disordered. Liberals and conservatives take for granted that coercing these persons is also the duty of the government. [...]

Massive Foreign Aid Is the Solution to Africa’s Ills?

President Bush traveled to Africa in July. Those sympathetic to the President might say he went to show his charitable concern for the problems of Africa and his sincere care for the downtrodden of the world. But a less rose-tinted view might have shown an unprincipled but skillful political machine bolstering its image among centrist [...]

Underdeveloping Indiana

The people of the 50 states of the United States (5 percent of the world’s population) produce 31 percent of the world’s gross product of goods and services. Think of the United States as a world in itself, composed of 50 countries with open borders and no restrictions on trade between them. In this world, [...]

An Alternative to Failed Foreign Aid

LAHORE, Pakistan-One of Lahore’s small Christian communities sits on army land and thus constitutes an illegal occupation in the government’s view. Most homes have one room. The latrines are makeshift, and families are lucky to survive on $20 a month. These are “very difficult times,” one resident told me. But these people have never seen [...]