Jobs: what next?

Miserable May jobs report suggests U.S. in recession red zone

By James Pethokoukis

The American

What socialism was (and is), and why it went wrong

The Great Lie: Pope Benedict XVI On Socialism

by Rev. Robert A. Sirico

One doesn’t usually expect a thorough-going reconstruction of the history of socialism in the late 19th century from the pope, but Benedict XVI delivered to us a wonderful–and oh-so-needed–reminder of what socialism was (and is), and why it went wrong. One can’t but marvel at his intellectual power: He has discerned the essential problem that has evaded vast numbers of academics for 100 years.

What’s more, he has done this in a time when socialism as an ideology seems to have been unfazed by the collapse of the communist experiment. Visit the philosophy and English departments on most college campuses, and you will still find intellectuals waxing eloquent on the glories of socialist theory. Students are still encouraged to imagine that it could work.

Crisis Magazine

GK Chesterton warned against falling into the “foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe.”

Never Respectable: An Interview with Jason Jones

by Stephen Herreid

The inhuman ideologies that were spawning like spiders in Chesterton’s day are now neatly woven into our culture. The radical Eugenic and economic theories against which he battled so robustly have now conquered our culture, transforming it into the complacent, soft and murderous Culture of Death. In fact we could look to Chesterton as a patron of our time, since he was a battler against the Culture of Death “before it was cool.” We can take a cue from him: “It is always easy to be a modernist,” he wrote, but it is also “easy to be a snob.” We must avoid being either. 


Crisis Magazine

Federal spending has averaged 20% of GDP for decades. President Obama is presiding over a much bigger government, at 24% of GDP.

The Obama spending binge

Nine days ago Mr. Rex Nutting of MarketWatch wrote a provocative column titled “Obama spending binge never happened.” ...

Keith Hennessey

People who have the ambition to get to the top frequently have a bias toward discretionary interventionism

Rules for America's Road to Recovery

by John B. Taylor (George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics; Chair, Working Group on Economic Policy; and member of the Task Force on Energy Policy)

America's economic future is increasingly uncertain. In my view, unpredictable economic policy—massive fiscal "stimulus" and ballooning debt, the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing with multiyear near-zero interest rates, and regulatory uncertainty due to ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank financial reforms—is the main cause of persistent high unemployment and our feeble recovery from the recession.
A reform strategy built on more predictable, rules-based fiscal, monetary and regulatory policies will help restore economic prosperity. That will be a daunting task, of course, but as they undertake the necessary changes, reformers should pay close attention to what the great economist and philosopher Friedrich A. Hayek wrote in the middle years of the last century.

hoover.org

« Vous devez d’urgence enrichir vos entreprises » dit Bruxelles à la France...

Nicolas Doze : « François Hollande ne tiendra pas son programme »

Par Eric Martin 

Pierre Moscovici, le ministre de l’Économie, des Finances et du Commerce exterieur, « nous dit : ‘Nous ferons les 3% en 2013 et nous ferons le programme comme nous l’avons annoncé. Ça veut dire le SMIC, ça veut dire la retraite à 60 ans pour quelques uns, ça veut dire les emplois jeunes, ça veut dire la fin de la réforme de l’État – la règle du 1 sur 2 pour les retraites, ça veut dire les contrats d’avenir, ça veut dire la hausse du coût du travail, ça veut dire la hausse des impôts »

ndf.fr

Before abandoning the Catholic faith

5 Questions Before You Leave the Catholic Church

by Jennifer Fulwiler

1. Are you sure members of the Church hierarchy are worse than anyone else?

2. Are you sure your faith life would be better outside of the Church?

3. Are you sure the Church's teachings are wrong?

4. Are you sure the Church's doctrines aren't divinely inspired?

5. Are you sure we don't need the Church?

ncregister.com