I have just stumbled across this excellent article in the day before yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. It is not only a good read but, for me personally, a real delight.
You see the author, Valentin Petkantchin, is an associate researcher at the Institut economique Molinari (IEM) the Francophone free market think tank set up and directed by a TCC Senior Fellow, Dr. Cecile Philippe. When I lived in Brussels between 2002-2005, I worked hard to support Cecile get the IEM off the ground.
Very much the product of the Austrian School of Economics and in particular the Ludwig von Mises Institute in the US, Cecile and her French speaking colleagues are now achieving great success. Crucially, they are committed to not only promoting sound scholarship far and wide, but they are busy reconnecting the French-speaking world to its own heritage. This is no easy task because for too long, Bastiat, Turgot, Constant, Molinari – to name but a few – have been ignored. And this has meant that French students have been taught that free markets are somehow an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy.
If you speak French and have the time then have a look around the IEM site. You will not be disappointed.
