Features

Electricity became more valuable than gold this summer–or at least more valuable than finished aluminum ingots. At the beginning of June, 270 workers at Ormet Corporation aluminum plant in Hannibal, Ohio, were laid off for the summer when the company concluded that it was more profitable to sell the electric power normally used in its […]

Ben Franklin might seem, at first glance, to have little in common with Karl Marx. But when the German philosopher wrote in the Grundrisse that “the individual carries … his bond with society in his pocket,” the author of Poor Richard’s Almanack might well have agreed. One of our most enduring American faiths is that […]

When the stock market started tanking in September, there was no shortage of good reasons offered. Most analysts cited high oil prices, the slumping euro, weak corporate earnings, and fear that the Fed would leave money too tight or not tight enough, triggering inflation or slower growth. A lot of observers thought the high price-to-earnings […]

One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy, Thomas Frank. Doubeday, 414 pages, $26.00 Some years ago, a newly minted corporate lawyer attempted to explain to me the mysterious workings of the free market. His handiest analogy for the market’s just and equitable distribution of goods was the way […]

At the opening of the twenty-first century, the United States seems to be leading the world toward embracing risk and rejecting security. Images of risk-taking as the ticket to success saturate contemporary culture, making extreme sports athletes and high-tech entrepreneurs the heroes of the 1990s. Replacing government protections with market challenges has become a central […]

Prompted by a plunge in the Consumer Confidence Index, which hit a near-five-year low in February, The New York Times dubbed confidence the “X factor that can save the day or push the economy over the brink into recession.” Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Congress that “changes in consumer confidence will require close scrutiny in […]

F or the past year and a half, the stewards of the American economy have been worrying that too many Americans are drawing regular paychecks. The fear is never quite put that way, of course, but as the national unemployment rate has dropped to 4 percent, the Federal Reserve has been getting restive. Six times […]

W ill the economic expansion just keep rolling on? Probably not. The economy has certainly demonstrated that it can sustain higher rates of growth than most economists thought possible. This higher speed limit is one part technology, one part greater competition, and one part belated recognition that the earlier pessimism about the economy’s potential was […]

For George Bush the elder, the recession of the early 1990s was adifficult subject, something best not discussed in public. As he put iton November 20, 1991, “I think more than anyone else in this country,obviously, that if the president misspeaks or sounds euphoricallyoptimistic, or overly pessimistic, you send the wrong signals to askittish market […]

B y recent standards, the dismal U.S. trade figures for April 2000 counted as a relief. After all, imports fell slightly, and this helped narrow the trade deficit for the first time since August 1999. So much for the good news. Now for the bad: At $30.4 billion, the April deficit was just fractionally below […]