Articles

On September 10, 2015 the Lithuanian Free Market Institute will be holding a conference “25 Years on the Road to Freedom. Past Reforms and Future Challenges” with the aim to evaluate the transition and reforms that our region has accomplished and to discuss the desired direction of further development.

“An experiment of austerity” and “blackmailing” are just a few of the many fanciful epithets employed by the members of SYRIZA and socialists to create a “syrizophrenic” picture of what is going on. However, the true reasons of and solutions for the crisis have already been known for a long time.

On July 23, The Guardian published the results of a report by the “Tax Justice Network” (TJN). The title – “Wealth doesn’t trickle down – it just floods offshore” – cannot remain unnoticed by the reading public.

On July 30, the British magazine \"The New Statesman\" published an article by the famous philosopher John Gray on the life, intellectual achievements, and mistakes of Friedrich Hayek. Gray’s piece examines the Austrian’s economic and political views. It is almost as if Gray puts Hayek on trial, the verdict of which has already been decided upon.

Following the Greek tragedy, there is a search for ways to prevent crises of similar magnitude from happening. Different state representatives are coming up with different solutions on how best handle such situations. What the eurozone needs are more voices advocating for the benefits of competition.

Individualism, lack of trust in the state structures as well as in any kind of administration or elite and their decisions were the cornerstone to the Polish success, and now they constitute the major obstacle for moving forward.

Hong Kong and Switzerland top the rankings of a new index released today that presents the state of human freedom in the world. The U.S. performance is worrisome and shows that the United States can no longer claim to be the leading bastion of liberty in the world. The Human Freedom Index (HFI) is the most comprehensive measure of freedom ever created for a large number of countries around the globe.

The euro indeed plays a major role in the Greek drama, but the ultimate cause of the Greek economic turmoil lies somewhere else. The real problem is that the architects of the euro used it as a turbo that was meant to speed up the integration engine of the eurozone, while encouraging other European countries to do so as well.

In the last five years, Piraeus Bank has lost 97% of its value and Eurobank (indeed, an apt name) an astounding 99.8% of the value. Their market value is currently five times lower that the market value of the Uber company. However, the Stock Exchange has not reached the historic low of the year 2012.

The invisible hand is actually made of billions of very visible hands which put the products into shopping carts, receive payments, or shake other hands to complete a contract. The market is efficient because it is the only real “social” element of the arrangement of the society.