Fukuyama’s Box
At a time when it needs it more than ever, the world is suffering, it seems, from a dearth of serious political and economic innovation.
Post Tagged with: "Economic Crisis"
Weighing In: Basic Economic Principles and the Unemployed
Last week, Peyton argued that, “If the goal of policy is full employment, there are likely much better ways to accomplish this than unemployment insurance, and the drawbacks of this program [to extend UI benefits] are not to be rejected out of hand.” As he accurately points out, “The debate among economists is not about whether unemployment benefits generate additional [...]
The Quants Revisited
I reviewed Scott Patterson’s book The Quants for our summer issue, and I’d like to expand upon my conclusion. I wrote: The professors are the new barons of Wall Street, and they appear poised to accrue even more power. They are like “civil engineers … after a bridge collapse,” Patterson writes: they’re to blame, but they’re also needed for the [...]
E.U.: Vacationing a Human Right
In a bold step intended to reduce poverty, the European Union will soon be providing some of the Continent’s poorest citizens with subsidized plane tickets and hotel rooms. The Toronto-based National Post reported on Monday that the European Union has declared traveling for tourism a human right, and is launching a scheme to subsidize vacations with taxpayer money for those [...]
John Dewey and Modern Economics
The New Republic has reprinted a wonderful Depression-era essay by John Dewey about the collapse of what he calls the “romanticism of business”: But it was just at this point that the new romanticism of business so cleverly came in. Human imagination had never before conceived anything so fantastic as the idea that every individual is actuated in all his desires [...]
The Dim Prospects for Meaningful Financial Reform
Well, the Senate just spent a year trying and failing to pass a moderate, compromised-to-hell health reform plan. Which, incidentally, if that is comprehensive reform I’m not really sure I’d like to see their “tinkering around the edges”. However, the important thing is that they managed to defuse special interest anger by buying them off with legislative goodies. Wait, that’s [...]
Larry Summers’ Endowment
The Boston Globe has a must-read article out on Larry Summer’s role in Harvard’s endowment collapse. I like the lede: It happened at least once a year, every year. In a roomful of a dozen Harvard University financial officials, Jack Meyer, the hugely successful head of Harvard’s endowment, and Lawrence Summers, then the school’s president, would face off in a [...]
In Need of Assistance
Reforming foreign aid at home In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush made a sweeping commitment to global economic development. In early 2002, he declared, “We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror. We fight against poverty because opportunity is a fundamental right to human dignity.” Development was to be a vital [...]
Conservative Revolutionaries
How the European right wing have become unlikely innovators in the worldwide financial crisis The economic crisis the world is currently experiencing has been the worst since the Great Depression. In such a period, nothing could be easier than pointing out market failures and the inefficiencies of deregulated capitalism. Indeed, it should be the perfect setting for an increase in [...]
After Woodstock
Protest music for a new generation The anniversary of Woodstock has come and gone, and with it scores of revitalized folk records and overused tie-dye designs. Many years have passed since the anti-Vietnam movement flooded the streets of America, and time has brought international conflict, economic downturns, and changes in the ideology of our political leaders. The question left in [...]
