There is a word missing from the “solutions” offered by both Democrats and Republicans to the searing economic crisis visited upon America by a combination of craven financial speculators, complacent regulators, feckless politicians and not a little bit of greed
As an economist, I eschew the soft-headed convenience of ready-made ideologies, together with their carrying rationalities, turning upon intellectual vulgarities I haven’t the stomach to bear. But even when we look askance at ideologies, focusing instead upon flinty economic facts
In 1999, I was lecturing at the Smithsonian Institution (The Smithsonian Associates), on The History of Revolutions. At the end of the series, a question was put to me, namely: which country was poised for revolution? My answer was “this