I have many frustrations in my life, and near the top of the list is the conservative fixation about balancing the budget. This view is very misguided. Red ink isn’t good, but the fiscal problem in America (as well as Europe, Japan, etc) is that the public sector is too big. Milton Friedman was right […]

I’ve written a couple of serious posts about the European fiscal crisis, including an explanation of how the problem could be solved and one about the importance of gun ownership in case the pessimists are right and civil society collapses. But something funny would make this day better and this Hitler parody is the best […]

Europe is in the midst of a fiscal crisis caused by too much government spending, yet many of the continent’s politicians want the European Central Bank to purchase the dodgy debt of reckless welfare states such as Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal in order to prop up these big government policies. So it’s especially noteworthy […]

There’s always been a simple and desirable solution to Europe’s fiscal crisis, but nobody in Europe wants to do the right thing because it means admitting the failure of big government and it would result in less power for the political elite. So we get the spectacle of never-ending emergency summits as the political class […]

In hopes of stopping investor panic about Europe’s fiscal crisis, the world’s major central banks just announced that they will do whatever is needed to ensure financial markets don’t freeze up. This could be an appropriate and relatively benign use of the lender-of-last-resort powers, or it could signal another round of reckless easy money and […]

The economic and fiscal crisis in Europe looks worse every day as a growing number of international investors decide that nations such as Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Spain can’t be trusted. As a result, interest rates on government debt are hitting record levels. Not surprisingly, Europe’s craven political class is refusing to reduce the burden […]

As demonstrated by the new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, there are five key lessons to learn from the fiscal crisis in Europe. Unfortunately, Europe’s despicable political class has not learned from their mistakes. They are not taking the simple and obvious steps that are needed to address the problems of spendthrift […]

I’ve written about the fiscal implosion in Europe and warned that America faces the same fate if we don’t reform poorly designed entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But this new video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, narrated by an Italian student and former Cato Institute intern, may be the best explanation […]

Appearances can be deceiving. I saw an article with a blaring headline that warmed my heart: “France’s Sarkozy Eyes Welfare Rethink, Fraud Clampdown.” Could it be, I thought, that the political elite finally realized that the welfare state was the wrong model? Had they finally realized, as demonstrated by these cartoons, that it was foolish […]