Departments

;

economics

  • SOURCE: London Review of Books
    4/15/2021

    The Gatekeeper

    by Adam Tooze

    Paul Krugman's career as a politically influential economist has reflected the political dead end of the Clinton-era ideal of technocratic governing. His new book suggests that the intellectual authority of the economics profession may no longer prevent active government or deficit spending. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    3/11/2021

    The Coronavirus Killed the Gospel of Small Government

    by Zachary D. Carter

    Revisiting the work of Keynes highlights the fact that struggles to deal with the pandemic are not only public health failures but economic failures — an inability to marshal resources to solve a problem. 

  • SOURCE: Harvard Magazine
    12/16/2020

    The American Exception: How Faith Shapes Economic and Social Policy

    by Benjamin M. Friedman

    Historian Benjamin Friedman's new book examines the importance of changing religious ideas in American Protestantism as influences on the development of social and economic policy. Part of the concluding chapter is excerpted here. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    12/2/2020

    The Gadfly of American Plutocracy (Review)

    by Simon Torracinta

    A new biography of the social theorist examines how his approach to understanding a past gilded age can offer lessons for our present one. 

  • SOURCE: Bloomberg
    9/21/2020

    Look What Has Been Taken From Black Americans

    It's difficult to quantify the financial cost to Black Americans of racism and segregation. But the destruction of property and denial of trade by white mobs in Elaine, Arkansas in 1919 was quantified by Ida B. Wells-Barnett; her findings can put the scope of a reparations program into some perspective.

  • SOURCE: Frank Interviews
    9/10/2020

    The Debt We Still Owe

    Economist Sandy Darity summarizes the case for reparations through the persistent Black-White wealth gap. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    8/6/2020

    The Real Reason the American Economy Boomed After World War II

    by Jim Tankersley

    Citing recent economic research, the author argues that fighting employment discrimination and ending the idea that white men have a privileged claim on good jobs will be a potent engine for economic growth if and when America recovers from the pandemic. 

  • SOURCE: Current Affairs
    6/9/2020

    Capitalism as Religion (Review Essay)

    Eugene McCarraher’s The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity examines the ways in which capitalism, despite its purported scientific rationality, operates as a perverse kind of religion.

  • SOURCE: The American Prospect
    5/18/2020

    Keynes and the Good Life

    by Jeffrey Sachs

    Keynes did not give us a checklist of dos and don’ts other than general ones: Don’t waste human talents and physical resources through wanton unemployment, avoidable wars, or breakdowns of social and trade relations.

  • SOURCE: Foreign Policy
    4/9/2020

    The Normal Economy Is Never Coming Back

    by Adam Tooze

    The latest U.S. data proves the world is in its steepest freefall ever—and the old economic and political playbooks don’t apply.