De Soto National Memorial

An archaeologist says excavations in southern Georgia have turned up beads, metal tools and other artifacts that may pinpoint part of the elusive trail of the 16th-century Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. Dennis Blanton of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta was scheduled to present his findings Thursday to the Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Mobile, Ala. Excavations since 2006 in rural Telfair County uncovered remains of an Indian settlement along with nine pea-sized glass beads and six metal objects, including three iron tools and a silver pendant. Blanton says the artifacts are consistent with items Spanish explorers traded with Indians. In a ... Read Full Story

Throughout recent history, developing and former communist countries have not lacked political will, budgets, international manifestos, or mandatory law drawn up with the explicit purpose of giving rights over assets to the majority of citizens. The problem is that when governments set out to ensure the property rights of poor people, they behave as if they were traveling to a place where there is a property vacuum, as if they were landing on the moon. They presume that all they have to do is fill this vacuum with mandatory law. In most cases, however, there is no vacuum. People already hold a huge amount ... Read Full Story

Editorial Reviews It’s become clear by now the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in most places around the globe hasn’t ushered in an unequivocal flowering of capitalism in the developing and postcommunist world. Western thinkers have blamed this on everything from these countries’ lack of sellable assets to their inherently non-entrepreneurial “mindset.” In this book, the renowned Peruvian economist and adviser to presidents and prime ministers Hernando de Soto proposes and argues another reason: it’s not that poor, postcommunist countries don’t have the assets to make capitalism flourish. As de Soto points out by way of example, in Egypt, ... Read Full Story

Authority on Western and Third World Economies Hernando de Soto is currently President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) based in Lima, Peru. The ILD has been described as one of the most important think-tanks in the World and Mr de Soto as the “World’s Greatest Living Economist”. In 2004 he received Cato Institute’s the Milton Friedman Prize. The World’s Greatest Living Economist In detail Mr. de Soto was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1941 and did his post-graduate work at the ‘Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales’ in Geneva. He has served as an economist for the General Agreement on Tariffs ... Read Full Story

Wahey! Page 3 of Observer Business and media has a piece on Hernando de Soto, (Hernando de Soto Polar, to give him his full moniker, so as not to confuse him with the Spanish Conquistador), a highly regarded 67 year old Peruvian economist who speaks up for the poor and the informal economy. He believes Gordon Brown's low interest rates and quantitative easing will fail unless he also tames the derivatives. First, his numbers: $13 trillion in notes and coins in the world $170 trillion of credit in bonds and equity $600-1000 trillion in derivatives (this aligns with the unsubstantiated figure of 1.4 quadrillion ... Read Full Story