One of history's great economic experiments ended 20 years ago. The odd thing is that we still haven't figured out what the results mean. The comparative experience of West Germany and East Germany during the Cold War was the stuff of terrible human drama. But it also added up to the closest thing that economists have had to a scientific trial with identical twins. The two countries provided the clearest measure of how well a "command" economy could perform against a market economy. Here were the same people from the same culture, starting from a virtual clean slate at precisely the same level of development after World War II—but under radically different forms of economic organization. On Nov. 9, 1989, the final test results were delivered by the thousands of East Germans who streamed across the border. One of the "twins" had produced the most vibrant economy in Europe; the other had become a place of darkness and dysfunction. Milton Friedman, the foremost champion of modern free-market thinking, later said that that the fall of the Berlin Wall was worth more than everything he had said and written. It was "undoubtedly the most influential action for the last hundred years because it put finis to an attitude," Friedman told C-SPAN's Brian Lamb in 1994. "The lesson from the fall of the Berlin Wall was that we have too extensive a government and we ought to cut it down." (Click here to follow Michael Hirsh)
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...the Clinton visit still marks a big moment for Kim. It's the sort of recognition he's been eager to have for more than a decade. Bill Clinton has been all but absent from the news since Barack Obama took office and his wife, Hillary, became America's top diplomat.
