Virtually shutting down the economy to stop the spread of the coronavirus has been widely accepted as harsh but necessary in many countries. But poverty too is a disease: once it infects, it spreads and it devastates lives. Heather MacDonald, writing in Spectator USA, assesses the costs of the metastasizing economic shutdown.

Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.


