Austerity Agonistes  

Austerity: The History of A Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth Oxford University Press, 2013, 304 pp. Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity versus Possibility by Robert Kuttner Knopf, 2013, 352 pp. More disheartening than the economic catastrophe in the United …



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Debt and Deficit Delusions  

The United States is confronted with numerous threats to its economic well-being and security. The national debt is not one of them. The real challenges of our time are massive joblessness and the decrepit state of American infrastructure.



The Politics of Inequality  

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson Simon and Shuster, 2010, 357 pp. TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO, in the midst of economic collapse, it …



The Broken Economy  

Two and a half years after the recession started, Wall Street executives are once again collecting billions in bonuses, businesses are flush with cash, but most of America is still hurting. After a growth spurt at the end of last …



It’s Still the Economy  

The recession that started in December 2007 was already in its ninth month when a tumultuous ten days in September 2008 shook the world. First the U.S. government nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; then the investment banking house Merrill …



The Economic Collapse  

In the fall of 2008, a little more than a year after the Bank for International Settlements (a Switzerland-based organization that fosters cooperation between central banks) warned that “years of loose monetary policy have fuelled a giant credit bubble, leaving …







Robert Heilbroner 1919-2005  

“Whatever Dissent‘s problems,” Irving Howe once said to me in the 1980s, “we at least have two of the most literate economists alive.” He was referring to Robert Lekachman and Robert Heilbroner. Bob Heilbroner was a man of prodigious energy. …