CNE Monatsmagazin Digest
March-April 2006

English Summary

The Ball in Brussels: CNE-President Mattias Bengtsson welcomed 400 guests, among these the US-Ambassador to the EU, and dinner speaker Johan Norberg, also a new CNE-Fellow. Norberg' blazing address on the fruits of capitalisms was rewarded by standing ovations. The Adam Smith Award for life-time achievement was given to tireless libertarian Chris Tame, while the Adam Smith Publication Awards went to Jacob Arfwedson (Parallel Trade in Pharmaceuticals) and Wilfried Prewo (From Welfare State to Social State).

Provider problems: Edgar Gärtner, CNE-Environment Director, analyses Germany's energy markets. He advises regulation boards to refrain from offending profitable firms. Regulation boards should focus on artificial market barriers due to too-long contracting periods with monopolies. Sustainable energy provision is only possible if competition among providers is guaranteed, Gärtner says.

Eugen Richter: The great German free market publicist and parliamentarian died 100 years ago. He, as well as John Prince-Smith und Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch, made free trade the dominating ideology in late nineteenth century Germany. To Ralph Raico he was the leading liberal in Germany for more than three decades. The Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Gummersbach devoted a forum to celebrate the great adversary of Otto von Bismarck, and powerful liberal party leader.

Expiration date: Gunnar Sohn looks for more ways to bring light in the regulation jungle. "Germany chokes in the thicket of regulations. Why not give an expiration date to new regulations", he says, adapting an idea by Markus Mingers, who runs a Bonn Traders Association, "Year after year, more regulations show up and hamper enterprises. According to a study by IFM (Research institute for medium-sized businesses), Germany's companies have to cover 46 billions regulation costs each year", says Sohn.

Social Justice: a term neither unambiguous nor precise, says Hardy Bouillon. Why do so many, even staunch liberals, give in when it comes to social justice? Calcualtion, phylogentic heritage, as Hayek said, or the belief that the truth is somewhere in between? Social justice is a fiction, and theories on social justice either attempt to establish themselves as a correlative or restriction to commutative justice. Both attempts fail, pretending a fictituous contract to match real ones and mixing up private property with postive externalities, says Bouillon.

Fiat money, second edition: Philipp Bagus reviews the second German edition of Rothbard's Das Schein-Geld-System (What Has Government Done to Our Money?) . "In the day-to-day discussion on monetary policy the basic questions are left unanswered", says Bagus. The second edition of Rothbard's book fills that gap, providing a superb analysis of gold and fiat money. The German edition has another feature: Jörg Guido Hülsmann, who translated Rothbard's book, updated Rothbard's history of the international monetary system to date.

Click here to view the full Monatsmagazin in German.

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