Why I Fired My Broker
With his 401(k) in ruins, our correspondent visits investment gurus, hedge fund managers, and a freakish Arizona survivalist with one question in mind: How can the ordinary investor recover?
May 2009
In This Issue
Jeffrey Goldberg fires his broker; Simon Johnson on how the bankers are impeding recovery; Sage Stossel on the Facebook exploits of world leaders; Lynn Ferrin on Yosemite's Rock Stars; Caitlin Flanagan on Alec Baldwin and his daughter; Christopher Hitchens on Edward Upward; and much more.
Features
The Quiet Coup
How bankers took power, and how they're impeding recovery
The Fed's Cash Machine
The fiscal stimulus is puny compared with the actions the Fed has been taking behind closed doors.
Across the Universe
Finding intelligent life in the cosmos requires leaving the solar system. One group of scientists may have found a way.
Facebook Group: World Leaders
Hugo Chávez and Hu Jintao are now friends.
Pakistan’s Fatal Shore
The port of Gwadar could be the next Dubai. Or it could be a deadly ethnic flash point in the most dangerous country on Earth
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Clean Energy's Dirty Little Secret
Hybrid cars and wind turbines need rare-earth minerals that come with their own hefty environmental price tag.
The Empty Arena
If you build it, they might not come.
How Historical Fiction Went Highbrow
Paperback writers pass the torch to Joyce Carol Oates and Gore Vidal
Turkish Smoke-Out
Will Istanbul’s way of life survive a smoking ban?
Lambs to the Slaughter
Shoppers are finding more ways to buy humanely raised meat from close-to-home farms.
Yosemite's Rock Stars
Fifty years ago, climbers conquered the “unclimbable” El Capitan; today climbers and visitors are still seduced by Yosemite granite.
Porn's Best Friend
TrackMeNot lets you disguise your Internet searches—sometimes at society’s expense.
Books
Hitler's Co-Conspirators
New histories reveal that the Nazi Regime deliberately insinuated knowledge of the Final Solution, devilishly making Germans complicit in the crime and binding them, with guilt and dread, to their leaders.
The Passion of Alec Baldwin
The blustering actor’s memoir of divorce is really a love letter to his daughter.
The Captive Mind
Edward Upward was one of the only writers of the ’30s to deal with Britain’s elephant in the room—fascism—but his career was forever warped by his communism.
Columns
The Gift-Card Economy
For some people, spending just doesn’t come naturally—especially in a recession. Behavioral economists have a solution
The Sorcery of Alan Moore
How pop culture fell under a comic-book writer’s strange spell
Also in this issue
What's Your Problem?
Tolerate cheese and other advice
Other articles in this issue
Quick Study
Recess roulette; the Darwinian novel
