Essays & News

The governors of the European Central bank met on December 2 and decided to make a further small reduction in already negative lending rates, while extending their bond purchasing program by another six months to March 2017. In its unsuccessful way, the ECB is trying to resolve a trilemma. It wants to spur economic growth through […]

French investigators suspect that the perpetrators of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris used prepaid debit cards to cover their expenses. New measures will be proposed by the European Commission next month to make it harder to finance such operations, writes Prince Michael of Liechtenstein. This “action plan” will outline a series of steps, […]

Semantic Traps: Politics with Loaded Terms A Seminar for Scholars, Journalists and Entrepreneurs “One must always repeat the truth, because even the error around us is preached again and again. And not from individuals but from the crowd.”   J.W. von Goethe      When political speech writers pen speeches for presidents, prime ministers, and other […]

A book review    “The State in the Third Millennium” is a remarkable work. Elegantly written by a historian who is simultaneously a head of state, politician, successful international businessman, world famous art collector, and leading philanthropist, it will doubtless provoke some frank debates. After much research and historical study of the concepts, purposes, and […]

An Economist Looks at Europe by Pedro Schwartz (Jan 4, 2016) Quite some years ago, when I was a very liberal young man writing a doctoral dissertation on John Stuart Mill, I asked my supervisor Lionel Robbins what he thought of the restrictions newly introduced on immigration by the then Conservative government. Robbins answered with […]