Simon Johnson and Peter Boone wrote an interesting article the UK Telegraph Saturday called “The New Feudal Overlords of Europe will be the bankers of the ECB.” Johnson is also the co-author along with James Kwak of a thoughtful and provocative book 13 Bankers as well as a blog on economics. Also on the ECB see my colleague Sam Gregg’s Piece at Public Discourse Using Hayek’s famous phrase “The Road to Serfdom” Johnson and Boone argue the demise of Europe...

At the start of Washington’s unprecedented federal interventionism into the private sector and on the heels of a Newsweek cover heralding that “We Are All Socialists Now,” there was considerable angst that free market defenders had forever lost the public. Not so, says American Enterprise Institute President and author Arthur Brooks. Brooks says “America is a 70 – 30 percent nation in favor of free enterprise,” but the forces of statism have capitalized on the financial crisis and have an...

Some members of the Acton team were in Krakow, Poland, last week for the third conference in our series on Poverty, Entrepreneurship and Integral Development. This conference, which took place on May 19th, was on the topic of Building a Commercial Society: Culture & the Transition to Wealth, and was co-sponsored with the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, the Civil Development Forum, and the Polish American Foundation for Economic Research and Education. With a massive debt crisis threatening...

I had been scheduled to appear opposite Ray Nothstine at the most recent Acton on Tap last month to discuss the question: Are Tea Parties good for America? I had to miss that event, unfortunately, but this week’s Acton Commentary represents my belated engagement on these matters. Check out, “Missing the Boat on the Tea Parties,” and leave ments here. While you’re over there, be sure to read mentary, “Will Tea Parties Awaken America’s Moral Culture?” And speaking of Acton...

I have taken an unofficial and unplanned hiatus from PowerBlogging over the last few weeks as I worked toward finishing up a book manuscript that you’ll hear much more about in ing days. But in the meantime, I did continue to take note of things that might be of interest to PowerBlog readers, and one of these things was a recent NBER working paper, “Discontinuous Behavioral Responses to Recycling Laws and Plastic Water Bottle Deposits.” I noted it in part...

If you read this post about Claire Berlinski’s recent article in City Journal, and the follow-up post calling attention to Ron Radosh’s critique of the article, then you may be interested in Berlinski’s return volley here. ...

HT: InChainsForChrist.org From OBL News (5/19/10): Abba Seraphim will join a protest vigil to “Stand in Solidarity with Eritrean Christians” outside the Eritrean Embassy between 3-4 pm on Thursday, 3 June. The vigil has been organised by a number of Christian Human Rights’ organisations: Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Release Eritrea, Church in Chains, Release International and Open Doors. At a similar gathering in May 2008 Abba Seraphim handed in a petition at the Embassy calling for the resoration of His Holiness...

I mended a Claire Berlinski article last Thursday. Ron Radosh forcefully calls into question several elements of the Berlinski piece, though her central claim seems to me to remain intact: While the Nazis are widely and duly vilified, far too many in the West continue to excuse, minimize or ignore the activities of the munists. At any rate, mentary has sparked a lively discussion in ments section under his post. ...

“Catholic scholars say those who thwart labor mit mortal sin,” says the headline from Catholic News Service. It’s an accurate characterization of a statement released by a group called Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice. (You can read the statement in full at the organization’s web site.) It’s certainly attention-grabbing, but is it sound moral analysis? The answer is no. I’m not trained as a moral theologian, but I do know something about Catholic social teaching and I can apply elementary...

Over at Public Discourse, a new article by Acton’s research director Samuel Gregg examines the deeper reasons behind the problems of the euro. In “Europe’s Monetary Sins,” Gregg points out that many of the euro’s present difficulties reflect a basic refusal of Europe’s political class to acknowledge some of the unpleasant economic realities associated with the EU’s social model, as well as a tendency to say one thing while really doing another. In short, Gregg argues that many of Europe’s...