New Cato Journal Features an Array of Articles on Urgent Monetary Matters
Amanda GriffithsThe Fall 2019 edition of theCato Journal, the Cato Institute ’s interdisciplinary journal of public policy, is now available online. Readers of Alt-M will find the articles on monetary and financial topics of special interest. Their topics range from financial inclusion, to macroprudential policy, to Modern Monetary Theory, to the politicization of the Fede ral Reserve, to European monetary policy. Here are links to the full-text articles–followed by a summary of each."Consumer Protection and Financial Inclusion"Drawn from remarks he delivered at the Cato Institute ’s Financial Inclusion Summit this p...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 2, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Amanda Griffiths Source Type: blogs
United States Ranks 5th in Economic Freedom
Ian V ásquezTheEconomic Freedom of the World: 2019 Annual Report is out today. The highest-ranking countries in this year ’s index, co-published in the United States by the Fraser Institute and the Cato Institute, are Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States.Hong Kong still ranks first in the index —which is based on 2017 data, the most recent year for which internationally comparable data are available—but we are concerned about its ability to maintain a high position given Beijing's increasing intervention in the territory's affairs. Already we have seen a decline in Hong Kong's rule o...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 12, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Ian V ásquez Source Type: blogs
Context and Nuance, Part 5
I worked for 15 years at a community based organization in Boston that was founded as a public health agency targeting the Latino population. We eventually had offices in Boston, Lowell and Brockton, and began to offer behavioral health and clinical case management as well as community health promotion programs. I was one of the few Anglos who worked there, but I don ' t know that I was exactly more of a minority than everybody else. My co-workers were of Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan, Argentinian, and eventually also Haitian and Brazilian ethnicity as we expanded the communities we served. We di...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 15, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Don't Cry for Me, Democratic Socialists
When debating socialists, it often feels as if you ’re trying to hit a moving target.Socialism in action, in the words of Robert Lawson and Ben Powell,“sucks.” But as my former colleague Kristian Niemietz explains througha litany of historical examples, countries once claimed toshow another way is possible are quickly dismissed as“not real socialism” when things inevitably turn sour.Debating socialism is more complex still in the contemporary United States. That ’s because today’s self-declared “democratic socialists” are trying tore-define what socialism means entirely.Gone is the lofty aim of collective...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 13, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Ryan Bourne Source Type: blogs
Venezuela's Murderous Regime
A new United Nations investigation underscores the brutal nature of Nicolas Maduro ’s government in Venezuela. Asreported in the July 4 edition of theNew York Times, UN investigators found that Venezuelan Special Action Forces “have carried out thousands of extrajudicial killings in the past 18 months and then manipulated crime scenes to make it look as if the victims had been resisting arrest.” In essence, government security units acted as death squads to eliminate regime opponents.The death toll is shockingly large. Security forces “killed 5,287 people in 2018 and another 1,569 by mid-May of this year, in what a...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 5, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Ted Galen Carpenter Source Type: blogs
Bolivian Hemorrhagic Fever
In 2019, a small outbreak of Bolivian hemorrhagic fever was reported at a hospital in La Paz, Bolivia. The following background data on Bolivian hemorrhagic fever are abstracted from Gideon www.GideonOnline.com and the Gideon e-book series. [1,2] Primary references are available from the author.
Bolivian hemorrhagic fever (BHF) is caused by Machupo virus (Arenaviridae, Tacaribe complex, Mammarenavirus). The disease was initially described in 1959 as a sporadic hemorrhagic illness in rural areas of Beni department, eastern Bolivia; and the virus itself was first identified in 1963. BHF is most common during April to...
Source: GIDEON blog - July 5, 2019 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Dr. Stephen Berger Tags: Ebooks Epidemiology Outbreaks ProMED Source Type: blogs
Preparing for a Venezuela After Maduro
If it becomes evident that Maduro isn ' t about to fall, then the Trump administration should revisit its sanctions and rescind those that fall most heavily on the Venezuelan people, while targeting and isolating the regime. (Source: The RAND Blog)
Source: The RAND Blog - June 23, 2019 Category: Health Management Authors: James Dobbins Source Type: blogs
When Hostility to Russia Becomes Irrational
The growing hostility toward Russia among some members of America ’s political elite is reaching alarming and irrational levels. Indeed, some critics of the Trump administration’s Russia policy insist that U.S. leaders should not be talking to the Kremlin at all. The latest person to voice that opinion is Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a member of th e Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. When Trump spoke by telephone with Vladimir Putin, primarily to see if they could reach somecommon ground regarding Venezuela and North Korea, Swal...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 10, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Ted Galen Carpenter Source Type: blogs
The latest deadly superbug — and why it’s not time to panic
I have to admit it: recent news reports about a newly described “superbug” are worrisome and at least a little bit terrifying. This time, it’s not a flesh-eating bacterium or drug-resistant tuberculosis — in fact, it’s not a bacterial infection at all. It’s a fungus called Candida auris (C. auris).
If the first part of the name sounds familiar, that may be because other Candida species (such as Candida albicans, glabrata, and tropicalis) cause common vaginal and skin infections. They’re often called yeast infections and while quite bothersome, they only rarely cause serious illness. Candida auris is a complet...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - May 8, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Robert H. Shmerling, MD Tags: Health Health trends Infectious diseases Men's Health Women's Health Source Type: blogs
Sen. Rick Scott ’s Venezuela “Genocide” Hype
In media interviews on April 30, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) accused Venezuela ’s leftist regime of engaging in genocide. It was not merely a slip of the tongue; Scott used that inflammatory term repeatedly—as he hadon previous occasions. Foreign policy hawks have resorted to similar tactics to arouse public opinion and generate support for U.S. military interventions in other conflicts, and Scott appears to havethat objective in mind regarding Venezuela.Nicolas Maduro ’s government is indeed a corrupt, repressive regime that has turned what was once South America’s most prosperous society intoa chamber of socialisti...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 1, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Ted Galen Carpenter Source Type: blogs
Odds and Ends
A few items that caught my interest.What ' s in a name:First, following up on last Sunday ' s sermonette,here ' s a fuller discussion of the names for God in Judaism. My very brief summary was essentially correct, but it ' s a much longer story. Note that the Torah never says that the name of God should not be pronounced, but that idea has grown over time in Jewish tradition.Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein of Chabad of Poway, who was maimed in the terrorist attack on Saturday in which one of his congregation was murderedhas an essay in the NYT in which he vows to stand up against anti-Jewish hatred. I commend it in its own right b...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 1, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Threefold Increases in Border Arrests for Nicaraguans and Indians in 2018
Since 2012, Border Patrol has apprehended a growing number of nationals from countries other than Mexico —almost all of them from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Last year, however, the agency saw threefold increases in apprehensions of Nicaraguans and Indians. These spikes may represent a widening awareness that America will accept people from around the world who come to the border to request asylum.Figure 1 shows that from fiscal year 2017 to 2018, the number of Nicaraguans arrested by Border Patrol increased from 1,098 to 3,337 —a 204 percent increase—and the number of Indians grew from 3,135 to 9,234—a 1...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 9, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: David Bier Source Type: blogs
College Admission Fraud: Weirdness Department
The recent flapdoodle has reminded me of a very strange incident my freshman year. That was a while ago, okay? They had us show up a few days before the start of classes for orientation -- you know, which way is south, don ' t climb the water tower (which we wouldn ' t have thought of doing if they hadn ' t told us not to), meet with your advisor, have the athletic department determine if you were worthy of their interest, all that sort of thing.They also tried to engineer ways of getting acquainted with your fellow students. One of these was folk dancing, which definitely did not interest me but for lack of anything bette...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 21, 2019 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Cuban Credible Fear Asylum Claims Surge After Ending Wet Foot, Dry Foot
In January 2017, President Obamaeliminated the decades-long policy of “wet foot, dry foot” that allowed Cubans who made it to the United States to enter legally in order to apply for a green card under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966. Prior to the change, the numbers of Cubans had steadily increased to the highest levels since the early 1990s. At the time, Iwrote:Because the normal asylum system is so backlogged, [ending wet foot, dry foot] could result in Cubans filing asylum claims under the normal system, as Central Americans do … The current asylum system, which is already massively backlogged, will only grow mo...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 20, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: David Bier Source Type: blogs
Socialism or Economic Mismanagement? Who Is to Blame for Venezuela ’s Plight?
TheWashington Post hadan interesting story yesterday on how Venezuelans are questioning not only their dictator, Nicol ás Maduro, but the ideology behind his regime: socialism. Who could blame them? Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, explicitly called their revolution “21st Century Socialism” and the result has been the Western Hemisphere’s greatest humanitarian crisis.However, thePost wonders whether Venezuela ’s plight should be blamed exclusively on socialism or whether there are other factors at play, such as economic mismanagement. For example, it compares the disaster of Venezuela with “European soci...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 13, 2019 Category: American Health Authors: Juan Carlos Hidalgo Source Type: blogs
