In the run-up to this weekend's G-8 summit at Camp David, journalists have unfavorably compared European "austerity" with Barack Obama's economic policies.

We have to face a key reality: Well-intentioned but disastrous mistakes are made by very intelligent, well-educated, highly informed people, backed by vast computing power and reams of data, but wrong nonetheless.

History shows us that sovereign governments often default on their loans, particularly in times of war or economic upheaval. Europe finds itself in this situation now and would do well to examine past sovereign debt crises—particularly, the European sovereign debt crisis of the 1920s—for lessons.

This lecture has been rescheduled for Monday, April 5.

Economic change for the better has todo with a powerful boost from extra government spending, an idea Keynes pioneered, and from tax rate cuts, an idea pioneered by Ronald Reagan.

So the stimulus--the so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or ARRA--is starting to wind down. What are the results?

The Obama Democrats have been giving Americans more government, with a vengeance, but the voters seem about to wreak vengeance in their turn.

Until recently there was wide consensus among macroeconomists that activist fiscal policy was inadvisable.