On February 1st, 2021 the military of Myanmar, called the Tatmadaw, launched a coup against the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on paper thin claims of massive voter fraud. The people of Myanmar have decisively rejected the coup, with protests organizing almost immediately after the coup, with hundreds of thousands of people of all ethnicities regularly gathering to demand the Tatmadaw return to the barracks. The military has cracked down, with at least 18 people killed by the armed forced on February 27th. The situation is rapidly changing on the ground, and todays podca ..read more

In December of 2020, the first announcement of effective vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer heralded the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, additional vaccines developed by AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, and by the Russian, Chinese and Indian companies have showed effectiveness. Nations across the developed world have raced to vaccinate as many people as possible, with the United States currently vaccinating 2 million people a day. However, the process of vaccination has been much slower in developing countries. Only roughly 10% of all vaccinations have occurred in developung c ..read more

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the most dangerous public health threat faced by the United States was the spectacular rise of drug overdoses in recent decades. Between 1999 and 2019 the number of drug overdoses has increased from 19,000 to 77,000. While the early days of the drug overdose epidemic was driven by the unethical prescription and abuse of prescription drugs, in recent years overdose deaths are driven by synthetic opiates. Between 2013 and 2019, the number of overdoses from synthetic opiates from 2,000 to 38,000. Although coverage of the drug overdose crisis in the United States focu ..read more

On March 17th 2014, Sergio Moro, a little known judge from the Brazilian state of Curitiba, authorized an investigation of suspicious money transfers at a gas station. The resulting investigation, known as Operation Car Wash or Lava Jato, uncovered a web of corruption that shook Brazilian society to its core. The largest construction companies in Brazil had created a cartel to bribe senior administrators in Petrobras, the state oil company, to overcharge for constructions and oil services. Conservative estimates show at least $2 billion in bribes and $17 billion worth of losses in overinflated ..read more

Before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global health crisis that kept the most public health experts up at night was the rise of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) microbes. According to the World Health Organization, 700,000 people lose their lives to multi-drug resistant microbes a year. If no steps are taken to control the growth of AMR microbes, 10 million people a year could die from AMR microbes, more than times the number of people killed by COVID-19. Basic medical procedures we take for granted, such as knee surgeries, would start carrying the risk of deadly sepsis. Today the super ..read more

On February 1st, 2021 the armed forces of Myanmar, called the Tatmadaw, under Min Aung Hlaing, launched a coup against the democratically elected leader Aung San Su Kyi ending Myanmar’s ill fated experiment with democracy. In 1962, the Tatmadaw launched a coup to create an unusually brutal and xenophobic dictatorship. Myanmar’s ethnic minorities have long been fighting a civil war against the Tatmadaw, the Rohingya faced massive discrimination, and Burmans of all ethnicities faced an economy dominated by the military and a state that offered only poverty. Cracks against the regime first emerge ..read more

In the last episode of the Wealth of Nations podcast, I discussed Ukraine’s spectacular economic implosion in the aftermath of independence, democracy and market reforms. However, Ukraine’s experience was far from universal. Nations such as Poland, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovenia successfully adapted to the political and economic transformations of the 1990s, and are now rapidly converging with western European standards of living. The nations that adapted most successfully to changing conditions benefitted from close geographic proximity to Europe, strong historic and cultural ties w ..read more

On August 20th 2020, Alexei Navalny became violently ill on a flight to Moscow. Navalny, who was evacuated to a hospital in Germany, had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok by the FSB, Russian security services. Navalny, a long time pro-democracy and anti-corruption activist, had been a thorn in Vladimir Putin’s side. Navalny was the closest Vladimir Putin had to a competitor in the 2018 Russian presidential election, and helped organize the unified front in the 2019 Moscow Duma elections that nearly saw the opposition take control of the municipal government of Russia’s most important ..read more

On August 24th, 1991 Ukraine declared its independence from and dissolution of formal ties with the USSR. Ukraine was supposed to be entering a new era of independent rule, democratic governance and a vibrant free market economy. However, this optimistic vision quickly proved to be a mirage. Between 1991 and 1999, Ukraine’s GDP PPP per capita collapsed from $14,500 to $6,800, and democratic government meant the empowerment of greedy oligarchs. While Soviet era economic statistics, and economic statistics from the 1990s are difficult to interpret, it is clear Ukrainians suffered a collapse in t ..read more

On August 13th, 2021 Uganda held general elections for president and parliament. The elections pitted Yoweri Museveni, the 75 year old president of Uganda since 1986 seeking a sixth term, against Robert Kyagulanyi, a 38 year old Reggae star better known as Bobi Wine. The results of the elections themselves are not in question. Businessmen have been donating generously to the National Resistance Party, the party of Museveni, and government propaganda is everywhere. Museveni has used the spectre of COVID-19 to ban opposition rallies . Moreover, he has unleashed massive violence against the oppos ..read more