Corey Robin has contributed an interesting essay to the Boston Review’s forum ‘Economics After Neoliberalism’. I am reluctant to enter into debates on, “Neoliberalism”, a term so nebulous and variegated in its usage as to render it useless as anything other than an all-purpose cudgel with which to browbeat others in middlebrow magazines (See Phil Magness on its pejorative origins). Robin’s contribution, ‘Uninstalling Hayek’, however, makes a bold case for removing economics from our moral and political discourse. Robin argues...

Mike Weirsky, an unemployed New Jersey man, just won $273 million in the Mega Millions lottery. According to one headline he “has a Good Samaritan to thank.” Weirsky left his tickets at the store where he bought them, but someone found them and gave them to the cashier. Thanks to this person Weirsky was able to reclaim his tickets the next day, and he then discovered he was the jackpot winner. He says that now he doesn’t need to worry...

Pete Buttigieg (pronounced BOOT-edge-edge), mayor of South Bend, Indiana is running for president. His candidacy is a pared to democratic front-runners like former vice president Joe Biden or senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Nevertheless, he’s worth watching for the window he offers into his generation: millennials. Buttigieg is 37 years-old, and while twice-elected mayor of South Bend, his first splash into the political scene was with the winning essay he wrote in the year 2000 for the JFK Presidential Library and...

John Maynard Keynes, 20th century British economist, is best known for his book, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” (1936), but it was his pointed analysis of the Treaty of Versailles, “Economic Consequences of the Peace,” which first launched him into the public eye. Keynes’s “Economic Consequences” incinerated main political players of the time who had a hand in drawing up the Versailles treaty, especially Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd Wilson and Georges Clemenceau. “Deep down, he believed, there was...

Today Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, offered further thoughts on the current crisis in Venezuela in an article published by Law & Liberty. His piece paints a general picture of major figures and their roles in the situation, as well as international actions and efforts in response to it. Chafuen notes that this is not plete list—other issues such as drug trafficking revenues are also important—but his descriptions offer a good overview of the Venezuelan crisis seen from the...

It’s no great secret that France is facing social upheaval and has some longstanding deep-set economic problems. Nor is it revealing to say that France’s political class is despised across the spectrum as woefully out of touch. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, however, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry underscores an important point about this situation that has escaped the attention of most people, including in France itself. It’s not just that the country’s meritocratic elite—personified by President Emmanuel Macron himself—are perceived...

To say that the history of Latin America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is marked by sadness and disappointment is hardly a novel insight. Whether it’s the persistence of cronyism throughout the region, the constant presence of Marxist ideology among intellectuals and in popular culture, the challenge of poverty, the crime and political violence, or the rampant populism that rears its head at regular intervals, many Latin Americans will tell you that theirs is the continent in which many...

Series Note: Jobs are one of the most important aspects of a morally functioning economy. They help us serve the needs of our neighbors and lead to human flourishing both for the individual and munities. Conversely, not having a job can adversely affect spiritual and psychological well-being of individuals and families. Because unemployment is a spiritual problem, Christians in America need to understand and be aware of the monthly data on employment. Each month highlight thelatest numberswe need to know...

if it is true that by our very nature and economy we tend to be transactional and reciprocal, then charity really is a theological virtue. It requires God’s own gift of grace so that we may give gifts like He Who Gives. Read More… This week’s Ash Wednesday marked the first day of Lent – a period of intensive spiritual renewal in many Christian liturgical calendars. Lent is a season lasting exactly 40 days, as we imitate the time Jesus...

Note: This is post #114 in a weekly video series on basic economics. A monetarist is an economist who holds the strong belief that the economy’s performance is determined almost entirely by changes in the money supply. The most well-known monetarist is Milton Friedman, who wrote about his beliefs in the book “A Monetary History of The United States, 1867 – 1960.” In the book he argued that a lack of money supply was a cause of the Great Depression....