CNE Monatsmagazin Digest
December 2005 / January 2006

English Summary

REACH will be suicidal for Europe, says Angela Logomasini of the Washington Competitive Enterprise Institute. In her 75-page study she explicates that the REACH-proposal of October 2003 would reduce Germany's gross value added by 3 per cent and cause a loss of more than 1 million jobs. The Brussels based Institut Hayek has just released her study in French and German. Free download at this link.

With its new "Kill Malarial Mosquitoes NOW" campaign, endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu et al., "Africa Fighting Malaria" seeks to end a terrible scourge that kills over 1 million people - the vast majority them in Africa. Foreign aid policies by western governments should welcome indoor spraying with insecticides. According to Richard Tren and Julian Morris, indoor residual spraying with DDT reduced malaria cases and deaths by nearly 75 percent in Zambia over a two-year period - and by over 80 percent in South Africa in just one year.

Some politicians treat only foreign debts seriously and thus subscribe to an old thesis by Abba P. Lerner, says Professor Charles Beat Blankart of Berlin Humboldt University. 60 years ago, Lerner taught that the national debt is nothing but a self-balancing item for which only interest has to be paid. Hence we should not worry too much about it. Following Lerner's saying "We owe it to our-selves", shows how close politicians are to totalitarian thinking, warns Blankart.

In agreeing on subsidies for the elderly jobless, the CDU and SPD want to fight unemployment with the wrong incentives, says economist Christoph Sprich. Subsidies raise unemployment rather than cut it back. Subsidizing elderly jobless people gives incentives to employers to fire younger employees - or not to employ younger people in order to get additional payments for hiring older ones. More jobs and more wealth can only be achieved by reform-orientated policies.

According to Professor Gerd Habermann, corporatism means "that organized private interests -- foremost the tariff cartel with its almost absolute privilege to exercise private coercion (strike and lockout) -- usurped sovereign power and thus "privatized" the state to their own interests. Professions and whole industries are privileged this way as a result of the quest for monopoly. "Guilding" a nation leads to stagnation and to its decline, Habermann echoes Mancur Olson.

"NeueNachricht. Das Magazin" ("NewNews. The Magazine") succeeds Criticón. Gunnar Sohn (longtime editor of Criticón and director of NeueNachricht) as well as his colleague Ansgar Lange are confident they have made the right decision. In the autumn issue of "NeueNachricht. Das Magazin" they focus on alleged "management failures" and the fashionable tendency to accuse top managers of having loose morals.

Arthur Seldon, the great old man of think tank liberalism, was an amicable, decent though not shy person, says Hardy Bouillon in a personal eulogy. Arthur Seldon fought for liberalism until his last breath; with innumerous papers and powerful books. Among the many honours he received (including becoming Commander of the British Empire), one he liked especially was being named the first Fellow of the Mont Pèlerin Society.

Click here to view the full Monatsmagazin in German.

Dr. Hardy Bouillon is Head of Academic Affairs at the Centre for the New Europe.