Barring legal maneuvers, a fringe party becomes part of a country’s mainstream politics for one of two reasons: because it sheds or conceals its extravagant views or because mainstream politics shifts in such a way as to make it relevant. The UK Independence Party, which won an average of 25 percent of the vote...
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French president Francois Hollande’s statement saying that the euro should not fluctuate according to the mood of the market; the complaint by Eurogroup president Jean-Claude Juncker about the euro being “dangerously high”; and the Bank of Japan’s recent decision to weaken the yen with “aggressive” quantitative easing confirm what we already knew: The world...
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Which articles on the Independent Institute’s websites and blogs received the most views last year? We thought you might be wondering! To satisfy your curiosity, we’ve put together two lists—each one shedding light on what most attracts the attention of our Internet audience. The first list of “articles” includes blog posts from The Beacon...
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Since the end of the Cold War, Latin America has hardly featured in U.S. presidential campaigns. The waning 2012 campaign has not been an exception. That said, Gov. Mitt Romney made a few references to Latin America in the debates but Obama let them pass without the slightest hint of curiosity. In the foreign...
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When the euro was created in 1999 the new currency promised to facilitate trade within the euro zone, to further unify Europe, and to challenge the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The common currency does facilitate trade, but the differing goals of the member countries seem to be creating more divisiveness than unity...
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Some of you may recall that Lord Wolfson (of Next stores fame) launched a contest in Britain asking European economists to put forward proposals for an orderly exit of one or more members from the European Monetary Union—i.e. the euro. Now that the deadline for submissions is passed, some of the participants (620 teams...
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I often disagree with Matthew Yglesias, but I found myself cheering when I read parts of his Slate column on President Obama’s State of the Union Speech. The president’s stated wish to protect domestic jobs by hindering trade is, Yglesias writes, “a strikingly retrograde, self-contradictory, and confused agenda of reviving American prosperity through mercantilism.”...
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A troubling agreement among divergent ideological strains in America has emerged over the years: China’s growing wealth is a problem worthy of a political solution. It is a focus of anger and frustration that unifies much of the left—unionists, opponents of free trade and corporations, agitators for regulatory harmonization, consumer “advocates” demonizing the Yellow...
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Economic “stimulus” packages that don’t revive the economy and that increase federal deficits and undermine private investment and job growth? Check. Laws meant to protect endangered species but which incentivize landowners who have them on their property to “shoot, shovel, and shut-up”? Check. Anti-poverty programs that foster dependency and hinder participation in the job...
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The Fall 2011 issue of The Independent Review is hot off the press! We have posted selected articles and all book reviews online, as indicated below. This issue addresses a host of fascinating questions on topics as diverse as intellectual history, economic development, political theory, and government policy: Why do progressives and social democrats...
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