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Recent Articles
- Panics 'R' Us! - June 29, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Since its earliest days, the United States has suffered periodic financial crises. The first dates to 1792. In the 19th century, bank panics occurred...
- Our Sinking Welfare State - June 22, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Raised in an individualistic culture, Americans dislike the concept of the "welfare state" and do not use the term. But make no mistake, the United States...
- Naive, Hypocritical and Dishonest - June 15, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- It's hard to know whether President Obama's health care "reform" is naive, hypocritical or simply dishonest. Probably all three. The president keeps...
- Inflation, Deflation--or Both? - June 8, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- To make sense of today's most perplexing economic debate -- whether we're flirting with inflation or deflation -- it's worth recalling what happened after...
- The Obama Infatuation - June 1, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John...
- The Bankruptcies We Need - May 25, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- When the trustees of Social Security and Medicare recently reported on the economic status of these programs, the news coverage was universally glum. The...
- Obama's Dangerous Debt - May 18, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Just how much government debt does a president have to endorse before he's labeled "irresponsible"? Well, apparently much more than the massive amounts...
- The Great Tax Dodge Demystified - May 11, 2009
- "(The U.S. tax code is) full of corporate loopholes that makes it perfectly legal for companies to avoid paying their fair share." -- President Barack Obama, May...
- The Bias Against Oil and Gas - May 4, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Considering the brutal recession, you'd expect the Obama administration to be obsessed with creating jobs. And so it is, say the president and his...
- Selling the Green Economy - April 27, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- Few things are more appealing in politics than something for nothing. As Congress begins considering anti-global warming legislation, environmentalists...
- Our Depression Obsession - April 20, 2009
- WASHINGTON -- The Great Depression of the 1930s was the most momentous economic event of the 20th century. It was a proximate cause of World War II, having fed the...
- Obama's Economic Mirage - Newsweek - April 13, 2009
- Obama's Economic Mirage - April 13, 2009
- What Obama proposes is a "post-material economy." He would de-emphasize the production of ever-more private goods and services, harnessing the economy to achieve broad...
- A Global Free-For-All? - April 6, 2009
- It may surprise Americans that, up to a point, his analysis is correct. The dollarized world economy developed huge instabilities -- vast trade imbalances (American...
- Uncle Sam's Hedge Fund - March 30, 2009
- But succeed or fail, Geithner's plan illuminates a fascinating irony. "Leverage" -- borrowing -- helped create this mess. Now it's expected to get us out. How can...
- Can American Capitalism Survive? - March 23, 2009
- Almost everything about Schumpeter's diagnosis rings true with the glaring exception of his conclusion. American capitalism has flourished despite being subjected...
- The Shadow of Depression - March 16, 2009
- What's more, the Depression changed our thinking and institutions. The human misery of economic turmoil has diminished. "American workers (in the 1930s) had...
- Obama is a Great Pretender - March 9, 2009
- With today's depressed economy, big deficits are unavoidable for some years. But let's assume that Obama wins re-election. By his last year, 2016, the economy...
- Wrong Turn on Housing - March 2, 2009
- Housing's distress is too much supply chasing too little demand. Huge inventories of unsold homes have depressed prices and construction. Given that prices rose too...
- Obama's Stimulus: A Colossal Waste? - February 23, 2009
- His politics compromise the program's economics. Look at the numbers. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that about $200 billion will be spent in 2011...
- A Lost Decade Ahead? - February 16, 2009
- What happened to Japan in the 1990s? It did not, as some commentators say, suffer a "depression." Not even a "great recession," as others put it. Japan...
- The Bailout Isn't a Morality Play - February 9, 2009
- Here's how the vicious circle works. With the economy weakening, more loans go into default. Distressed households and businesses can't meet payments. Diane Vazza...
- Too Little Bang for The Bucks - February 2, 2009
- "The smart grid, while a great idea, is basically a software project," says economist Marc Levinson of J.P. Morgan. "The reason utilities aren't pushing it faster...
- Three Economic Crises In One - January 26, 2009
- Second: the financial crisis. Lower lending deprives the economy of the credit to finance businesses, homes and costly consumer purchases (cars, appliances). The...
- The Great Foreboding - January 19, 2009
- Precisely this specter explains why the word "depression" is now so routinely deployed, even though we're a long way from the bread lines of the 1930s. But the...
- Boomers vs. the Rest - January 18, 2009
- The plight of the U.S. auto industry provides an ominous warning. For years, the "Big Three" and the United Auto Workers constructed an ever-more generous system of...
- Obama's Health Care Headache - January 12, 2009
- For the extra money, we receive no indisputably large benefit in national well-being. On some health measures (breast cancer survival rates), we do better than many...
- Obama's Unhealthy Choices - Newsweek - January 11, 2009
- Barack Obama talked somberly last week about getting the federal budget under control once the present economic crisis is past. By simple arithmetic, that...
- Stimulus = Stopgap - January 5, 2009
- The stimulus qualifies as a necessary evil, a parachute against an economic free fall. Conventionally, the economy is sliced into four sectors: consumer spending;...
- 2008: We Learned What We Don't Know - December 29, 2008
- It was once believed that the crisis of "subprime" mortgages -- loans to weaker borrowers -- would be limited, because these loans represent only 12 percent of all home...
- In the Hands of the Central Bankers - December 22, 2008
- Superficially, central bankers seemed poised to deliver a revival. As if on cue, major central banks cut interest rates in November and December to spur growth and...
- Lessons From the Great Inflation - Reason - December 18, 2008
- An Obama Gift for K Street - December 15, 2008
- There's more to come. Obama envisions refashioning a third of the economy: the health care sector, representing about 16 percent of gross domestic product; the...
- Bernanke's Daring Experiment - December 8, 2008
- All told, the Fed's new loans and credits easily exceed $1 trillion, which dwarfs the $335 billion committed by the Treasury Department under the better-known...
- Far-Reaching Reforms Can Wait - December 1, 2008
- The hallmark of this economic crisis has been its capacity to surprise: the desperate plight of the Big Three U.S. automakers is the latest reminder. We can expect...
- First Things First, Mr. President - Newsweek - November 30, 2008
- The Reverse Wealth Effect - November 25, 2008
- This last occurred in 1979 and 1980, when inflation reached 13 percent and government seemed incapable of suppressing it. No one knew what might happen. By 1980,...
- How to Bail Out General Motors - November 17, 2008
- No one knows what further havoc a GM bankruptcy might inflict. The Center for Automotive Research (CAR) estimates an initial job loss of 2.5 million. The logic: If...
- How to Bail Out General Motors - Newsweek - November 16, 2008
- The Specter of Deflation - November 10, 2008
- It's this history that makes deflation terrifying. Obama and his fellow leaders should worry. Since mid-September, economic conditions have deteriorated badly. In...