The Learning Curve | 2012 Archive

CHAPEL HILL — Fox News Channel chairman and CEO Roger Ailes blended wry wit and blunt assessment in deadpan delivery in an hour-long talk to more than 200 audience members at the 23rd Roy H. Park Distinguished Lecture at UNC- Chapel Hill Thursday.

The Morality of Capitalism is aimed especially at young people who have gotten a negative impression of capitalism — as the subtitle accurately suggests, college students are likely to hear little that’s good or accurate about it in their courses — but even veterans of the battle for liberty will find a lot of fresh, intriguing material here.

In this relatively short but highly illuminating book, economics professors Philipp Bagus and David Howden (both of whom are schooled in Austrian theory) explain the collapse of Iceland’s economy in 2008. Why bother with the difficulties of that little nation (population 313,000) in the remote North Atlantic? The reason is that the Icelandic debacle stemmed from exactly the same governmental blunders that have caused so many other boom and bust cycles around the globe. Iceland’s horrible recent experience has important lessons for Americans — indeed for people everywhere.

For the reader looking for a tell-all book by a Secret Service agent assigned to the White House, Within Arm’s Length: The Extraordinary Life and Career of a Special Agent in the United States Secret Service, will be disappointment. However, the reader who wants to read a great autobiography will be delighted.