- The World Bank thinks better of free-market absolutism;
- For some, every thing the least bit unusual is *meaningful*.
A couple non-political items today.
The Atlantic, Rogé Karma, 16 Apr 2026: A Pillar of the Economics Establishment Admits That It Was Wrong, subtitled “In a new report, the World Bank thinks better of its old free-market absolutism.”
For anyone or any institution to admit they were wrong, to have learned from evidence, is progress. And rare. Note “simple”:
How does a country get rich? For decades, the economics establishment generally agreed on a simple answer: Embrace free markets and avoid “industrial policy”—state-led efforts to shape what an economy produces—at all costs. No institution embodied this viewpoint, widely known as the “Washington Consensus,” quite like the World Bank. Established in 1944 to provide low-interest loans to developing countries, the bank soon became the intellectual center of development economics. In the 1990s, it took a hard stance against industrial policy, turning the concept almost into a taboo.
