The Egyptian Revolution Is Not About Us
Why newfound wisdom on Egypt is hard to take seriously More »
Advertisement
Clive Crook is a senior editor of The Atlantic and a columnist for Bloomberg View. He was the Washington columnist for the Financial Times, and before that worked at The Economist for more than 20 years, including 11 years as deputy editor. Crook writes about the intersection of politics and economics. More
Crook writes about the intersection of politics and economics.
Why newfound wisdom on Egypt is hard to take seriously More »
Judge Roger Vinson's ruling that the individual health insurance mandate is unconstitutional seems to have surprised a lot of commentators. I'm surprised they're surprised. The ruling may be wrong--ie, it may in due course be overturned by the Supreme Court--but it is perfectly intelligible, and oral argument had already suggested he was leaning this way. The only unexpected part of the ruling was his finding that the whole law is void, on the grounds that… More »
The problem with "competitiveness". The metaphor of growth as a race with winners and losers - all that stuff in the speech about Sputnik moments, falling behind, winning the 21st century - is nonsense. Over the long haul, if US productivity rises, so will US living standards. Why should growth in China or India hold back US productivity? No reason at all.Once conditioned to think "productivity" whenever a politician says "competitiveness", you look at economic… More »
Do you have some free time this weekend? Here is something to read, if you can stand the excitement. The Financial Inquiry Commission has published its report. So far, I've only skimmed it, but it looks thorough. It's a shame that the split between Democrats and Republicans on the panel will lessen, as I suspect, both its readership and its influence. The Republican dissenters could be right to say that report was insufficiently focused--when everything is… More »
Should Obama move his presidency there, or make the center come to him? More »
The Browser has a good interview with Robert Shiller--part of its FiveBooks series, in which authors recommend favorite reading on a topic they select. Shiller's subject is human traits essential to capitalism, and his choices run from Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments to Raghuram Rajan's Fault Lines. More »
The GOP needs to back away from its policies before it makes a fool of itself More »
Liberals implicate conservatives; conservatives fire back; politics continues unchanged by the shooting More »
What do the Daley and Sperling appointments mean for his presidency? More »
Within the US, especially, the widening gulf between the incomes of rich and poor, and what (if anything) to do about it, dominate political debate. Capitalism needs to be reigned back, many believe: untamed market forces are driving this dangerous trend (see this earlier post). Globally, on the other hand, one should note that market forces seem to be doing just the opposite. As Martin Wolf explains in his column this week, In the grip of a great convergence, the… More »
Have a look at this article if you haven't already: Tyler Cowen on The Inequality That Matters. It is really two essays in one, bringing together discussions on inequality and modern finance that have been mostly separate up to now. I agree with Cowen that this was an error: they need to be merged. Growing inequality is a narrower (and less politically salient) issue than is usually argued, he says, mostly confined to the financial sector and a sliver of the… More »
