On vacation in Colorado, we drive through the Littleton shopping mall. There it is, a two-story building, black and empty behind its glass facade. Mervyn’s Department Store. Founded in 1949, Mervyn’s grew to a chain of 189 stores in 10 Western states. But in 2008, Mervyn’s went bankrupt , laying off 18,000 employees without severance or . . . → Read More: The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis, by Josh Kosman
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This is the scariest book I’ve read since The Day of the Triffids. Back in the ‘70’s, US business monopolization seemed bad, but not getting worse. Spinoffs and breakups balanced mergers. Since then, as documented in Cornered by financial journalist Barry Lynn, global monopolization has rapidly returned us to a new age of robber barons. . . . → Read More: Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction, by Barry C. Lynn Yale Prof. Robert Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance (2000; 2005), predicted the 2008 financial collapse years before it happened. Last year, Shiller partnered with UC Berkeley Prof. George Akerlof to produce Animal Spirits–elaborating on the psychology that inspires “irrational exuberance” and other mass human behavior that affects the economy. . . . → Read More: Animal Spirits, by Akerlof and Shiller Did Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Abyssinia help Italy escape the Depression? . . . → Read More: Can Invading a Small Third-World Country Stimulate the Economy? Modern inequality causes stress and social problems, not just among the very poor, but at all levels of society. That’s just what Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett find in their new book, The Spirit Level Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. . . . → Read More: The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger As I wrote in Part I, the deficit hawks legitimately claim that huge deficits will hinder investment and kill jobs. But their solutions would make matters worse. What are those solutions? What are alternatives? A leading hawk, C. Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, proposes three control measures: containing Medicare and Medicaid costs, . . . → Read More: Deficit Hawk, Progressive Style, Part II Deficit hawks are justifiably concerned about ballooning national debt. But their solution–cutting social spending–would make matters worse. . . . → Read More: Deficit Hawk, Progressive Style, Part I David Goldhill’s father, 83 but still working, walked into a non-profit Manhattan hospital with pneumonia. Five weeks later he was dead from hospital-borne infections. Appalled by the negligence and primitive record-keeping of a top-rated hospital, Goldhill spent two years researching the US health system. The September Atlantic features Goldhill’s report on how . . . → Read More: Getting Health Care Incentives Right In the June 1 issue of the New Yorker, Dr. Atul Gawande investigates “The Cost Conundrum”: why some cities in the USA have much higher medical costs per person, and often poorer outcomes. He lands in the dusty border town of McAllen, Texas, located in the lowest income county in the US. . . . → Read More: Collaborative Medicine REVIEW Unjust Deserts : How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz simultaneously invented calculus in the 1670′s. As Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen far, it is because I have stood . . . → Read More: Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back |
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