Corporate scandals and evidence of fraud and malfeasance notwithstanding, the history of ever-rising standards of living in a world fearful of violence is extraordinary testimony to the resilience of free peoples engaged in commerce.
As President Eisenhower opined during the height of the Cold War, stating a view that remains applicable today, “[W]e now stand in the vestibule of a vast new technological age - one that, despite its capacity for human destruction, has an equal capacity to make poverty and human misery obsolete.”  2  BIS Review 30/2004