The Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, who died in 1992 at the age of 93, once remarked that to have the last word requires only outliving your opponents. His great good fortune was to outlive Keynes by almost 50 years, and thus to claim a posthumous victory over a rival who had savaged him intellectually … Continue reading The Keynes-Hayek Rematch

Everyone knows that Greece will default on its external debt. The only question concerns the best way to arrange it so that no one really understands that Greece is actually defaulting. On this topic, there is no shortage of expert plans – among them bond buy-backs, bond swaps, and the creation of Eurobonds, a European … Continue reading The Battle of the Bonds

Recently, at a literary festival in Britain, I found myself on a panel discussing free speech. For liberals, free speech is a key index of freedom. Democracies stand for free speech; dictatorships suppress it. When we in the West look outward, this remains our view. We condemn governments that silence, imprison, and even kill writers … Continue reading Free Speech under Siege

As the world recovers from the Great Recession, it has become increasingly difficult to discern the true trend of events. On the one hand, we measure recovery by our success in regaining pre-recession levels of growth, output, and employment. On the other hand, there is a disquieting sense that today’s “new normal” may be slower … Continue reading Lumpy Labour

“Shorting” is a tactic well known among the financial cognoscenti. It means betting against an asset with borrowed money in the expectation of making a profit when its value goes down. A speculator can “short” a government by borrowing its debt at its current price, in the hope of selling it later at a lower … Continue reading Democracy or Finance?

History has no final verdicts. Major shifts in events and power bring about new subjects for discussion and new interpretations. Fifty years ago, as de-colonization accelerated, no one had a good word to say for imperialism. It was regarded as unambiguously bad, both by ex-imperialists and by their liberated subjects. Schoolchildren were taught about the … Continue reading Imperialism Reclaimed

Is there more to be said about Egypt? Hosni Mubarak has been sacrificed to save the military regime. A “strongman” who cannot keep order in the streets is of no use to anyone. Whether “democracy” will ensue is much more dubious. Judging on the basis of Pakistan, and much of the rest of the Muslim … Continue reading Unsettling America

In 1995, I published a book called The World After Communism. Today, I wonder whether there will be a world after capitalism. That question is not prompted by the worst economic slump since the 1930’s. Capitalism has always had crises, and will go on having them. Rather, it comes from the feeling that Western civilization … Continue reading Life after Capitalism

Last month, while in New York City, I happened to be staying in the same hotel as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. To accommodate his security needs, the hotel had been converted into a fortress, much like Israel itself. Netanyahu was in the United States for yet another round of Middle East peace talks. The … Continue reading A Confederal Solution for Palestine

The just concluded G-20 meeting in Seoul broke up without agreement on either currencies or trade. China and the United States accused each other of deliberately manipulating their currencies to get a trade advantage. The Doha Round of global trade talks remain stalled. And, amid talk of the “risks” of new currency and trade wars, … Continue reading The Irrepressible 1930’s