Samuel Gregg is Research Director at the Acton Institute. He has authored several books including Becoming Europe.
Whenever anyone thinks of economic success stories, Latin America doesn’t exactly leap to mind. For the most part, modern Latin American economies have been characterized by corruption, cronyism, statism, populism, boom-bust cycles, failed reform efforts, and colossal meltdowns. There is, however, one major exception to that rule — Chile. Beginning with General Pinochet’s military regime […]
In April and May, French voters will head to the polls to decide who will succeed François Hollande as their President. France’s constitution invests the French presidency with even greater powers than an American president’s. But for all the power of the office, Hollande’s presidency is ending in failure. A somewhat hapless figure, he’s not […]
Whether it’s the rise to national prominence of Vermont’s self-described democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders, the election of a beyond-stereotypical 1970s sandal-wearing bearded-lefty, Jeremy Corbyn, as British Labour leader, polls estimating that 36 percent of Americans millennials have positive views of socialism, the breakthrough into mainstream politics by left-wing parties such as Syriza in Greece, […]
Civilizations come and civilizations go. While some prove capable of inner renewal, there’s no guarantee that any given culture will maintain itself over long periods of time. Today we continue to admire the achievements of Greece and Rome. As distinct living cultures, however, they’ve been dead for centuries. Many of us think of civilizational failure […]
When visiting my native Australia in late-July this year, I was invited to attend a book-launch at the New South Wales state parliament in Sydney. The main speaker was the now ex-Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott. It breaks no confidence to say that most people at the small gathering represented a Who’s Who of the […]
In the lead-up to the release of Pope Francis’ new encyclical Laudato Si’, most commentary focused on its likely-implications for the world’s climate change debate. An effort to influence that discussion—much of which has, like Al Gore, long since faded from public prominence and become confined to international organizations, NGOs, government bureaucrats, and professional lobbyists—is […]
“There are countries which are rich and countries which are poor. And there are poor countries which are growing rich. And then there is Argentina.” This saying, attributed to the 2010 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa, is perhaps the pithiest description of what many regard as the twentieth century textbook-case of economic […]
While Europe’s governments and financial markets have been fixated in recent months by the ongoing fiscal and political disaster otherwise known as Greece, the challenges facing one of the EU’s smallest members are, frankly, quite minor compared to what may well be Europe’s biggest looming internal problem. The name of that challenge? In a word: […]
It’s not unusual for non-Americans, and many Americans of a center-left disposition, to portray the United States as a dog-eat-dog society: one in which the poor are left to fend for themselves and where a night-watchman state doesn’t intervene, save in extreme circumstances and often not until it’s too late. It’s a mantra that’s endlessly […]
In case anyone missed it, the sick man of the global economy is getting much sicker. And it’s not just “peripheral” economies like Greece asunder in a sea of stagnation. Some of the European Union’s biggest players are in serious economic trouble. What’s especially striking, however, is so many European governments’ continued inability, and often […]
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