The conservatives haven’t made “tort reform” a crusade to stop a flood of products liability litigation. There is no such flood. This is a straight payoff to their benefactors.
Economic Policy
Posted inEconomic Policy
Gingrich’s Time Bomb: The Consequences of the Contract
Did anyone read the fine print? The Contract with America has been devilishly constructed with provisions that will set off a fiscal — and social — explosion years from now.
Posted inEconomic Policy
The False Messiah: Pete Peterson’s Revelations Are Not Gospel
Virtually without challenge, Pete Peterson claims to be a champion of the middle class. But his proposals would actually cut taxes for the rich and benefits for middle-income people.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Self-Fulfilling Prophets: Inflated Zeal at the Federal Reserve
Greenspan’s rate increases needlessly threaten to abort the recovery. A more accountable central bank is long overdue.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Seismic Stimulus: The California Quake’s Creative Destruction
The earth literally had to move to jolt Congress into passing a stiumulus package — and to lift California out of recession.
Posted inEconomic Policy
The New Dialectic
Modern economic life crosses national boundaries to form a web of intricate association that retards aggressive and regressive nationalism. Trade, investment, enterprise, technology, communications, and travel are today relentlessly transnational. Yet this same globalism undermines the capacity of the nation-state to stabilize its economy. From this paradox comes the first of the dialectics of our […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Happy Returns: How the Working Poor Got Tax Relief
Left and right agree on one way to spell relief: EITC. But how much relief?
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Predators’ Accomplice: How High Theory Abetted Speculative Excess
The prosecutor builds a case against academic apologists for the casino economy.
Posted inAmerica and the World
Spheres of Affluence
The fantasy of free trade still commands broad allegiance despite mounting evidence that it’s not optimal for either economic growth or national interest.
Posted inBooks
Citizen Keynes
Skidelsky’s dazzling biography gets Keynes the man just right, and his economics somewhat wrong.