Nation Topics - Economic Policy | The Nation

Milton Friedman's free-market faith produced a bastardized system of
interest-group politics that favors sectors of citizens at the expense
of many others.

As election day approaches, don't expect a reasoned discussion of
economic policy between the two parties. A barrage of
quips and one-liners have taken the place of detail and fact in
political debate.

Before the storm, neoliberalism shaped the social and economic
inequities of New Orleans; after Hurricane Katrina, it worsened them
by making government the tool of corporations and investors.

Is Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's new "conceptual
framework" of economic reform an acknowledgment of neoliberalism's
failures or simply a repackaged version of Clintonomics?

Back in Washington's day, Congress printed money to fight the Revolutionary War without collecting taxes to back it up--and paid the price in inflation: History repeats itself today.

The massive number of Americans who support raising the minimum wage
should spur Congress to action.

Interest rates nosed higher today as the Federal Reserve Board
sought to control inflation. But the impact of runaway inflation is
already being felt by workers whose wages will stagnate and whose
earning power is on a steep decline.

The affluent mask of the United States has been torn away by the storm, exposing a nation that has become progressively poorer under the leadership of the party of Big Business.

When the adulation fades, Alan Greenspan will be recognized as a right-wing ideologue and the most politicized Fed chairman in history.

Like oil and water, Chinese capitalism and US politics just don't mix.