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Robert Kuttner

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, as well as a distinguished senior fellow of the think tank Demos. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week and continues to write columns in The Boston Globe. He is the author of Obama's Challenge and other books.

Recent Articles

The Limits of Markets

The claim that the freest market produces the best economic and social outcome is the centerpiece of the conservative political resurgence. But without government intervention, the market can destroy a lot of things--including itself.

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001





Adapted by the author from Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets, Alfred A. Knopf / Twentieth Century Fund, published January 1997.

How to Rescue the Economy

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001

The economy now seems headed for serious recession. How to fight a shadowy enemy is
necessarily Topic A, but rescuing the economy is not far behind.

The economy is plummeting for several interrelated reasons. The stock market was already falling
sharply before Sept. 11. The speculative excess of the late 1990s financed trillions of dollars of
investments that will never return profits. Once investors grasped that, the market headed south. So this
is not just a blow to investor psychology; the economic blow is real.

Ironically, Gore's Biggest Worry May be About Oil

Robert KuttnerDec 19, 2001

The record economic boom is near a tipping point. Although no serious
inflation is being generated by the sizzling economy, increases in oil prices show up in the general price index. They also worsen America's balance of trade.

Meanwhile, the weakness of the euro is depressing profits that American
companies earn abroad. On all these counts, the stock market is getting very nervous.

A big stock market correction would cool off both consumer and business spending. It might scare off the foreign investors who keep buying our bonds. In this context, a misstep by the inflation-phobic Federal Reserve could help send the economy into deep recession.

Let's Have Real Shared Sacrifice

Robert KuttnerDec 17, 2001

Retailers are not expecting a great Christmas season this year. Shoppers have less money
in their pockets and more worries about their economic future. The very act of
shop-til-you-drop, always a little bizarre as a form of Yuletide expression, feels especially
unseemly in wartime, even when rationalized as a patriotic act of economic stimulus.

Low Marx

Robert KuttnerDec 07, 2001



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