By Anthony Wile

Despite its growing horrors, the 21st century has proven a profound blessing in the sense that we can see, step by step how tyranny is being implemented around the world and especially in the West. In doing so, we can chart its pathways and intricacies. Some may not consider this in any sense a blessing but we do. To watch the descent of tyranny on the Western world is a startling sight, which plumbs the depths of the human spirit and provides us with spectacles of evil and good, cowardice and courage. It is a great (if sad) time to run a free-market website that reports on libertarian social and economic trends.

I used to wonder how a financial depression took hold and what it would look like. I used to wonder how a society would lose its moral and social underpinnings and lurch toward authoritarianism. I wondered, even, what it would be like in pre-war Germany when the Nazis were coming to power. But the past decade has offered an education in all these concepts. Anyone paying close attention does not need to wonder anymore.

The first decade of the 21st century has been a time of resonant, historical themes, broadly observed. It is a truly historical struggle between those who wish to control and manipulate human societies and those who wish to make human societies, especially Western ones, freer.

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By Matthew Brown

Investors will face defaults on government bonds given the burden of aging populations and the difficulty of securing more tax revenue, according to Morgan Stanley.

“Governments will impose a loss on some of their stakeholders,” Arnaud Mares, an executive director at Morgan Stanley in London, wrote in a research report today. “The question is not whether they will renege on their promises, but rather upon which of their promises they will renege, and what form this default will take.” The sovereign-debt crisis is global “and it is not over,” the report said.

Mares said debt as a percentage of gross domestic product is a false indicator of an economy’s health given it doesn’t reflect governments’ available revenue and is “backward- looking.” While the U.S. government’s debt is 53 percent of GDP, one of the lowest ratios among developed nations, its debt as a percentage of revenue is 358 percent, one of the highest, the report said.

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By Mario Rizzo

The Keynesian worldview seems to have led to increasing stridency and dogmatism about economic stimulus, which has dominated the headlines for several months. There used to be a joke that you can teach a parrot economics—all it needs to say is “supply and demand.” Now it is even easier to teach a parrot the policy prescription to prevent a major recession: All it needs to say is “stimulus.”

Things have gotten so bad that no dissention can be tolerated.

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