Economic Growth Program

On October 13, 2009, Adrian Blundell-Wignall discussed the origins of the financial crisis and requirements for reform at the New America Foundation, as part of the OECD Breakfast Series.  Blundell-Wignall, Deputy Director for Financial and Enterprise Affairs at the OECD and author of a recent paper in the Journal of Asian Economics, delivered technical yet impassioned remarks from an international perspective, linking the explosion of complex derivatives to lax regulation, international tax arbitrage, and the persistent "equity culture" on

Over the past year the global economy has experienced a massive contraction, the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But this spring, economists started talking of "green shoots" of recovery and that optimistic assessment quickly spread to Wall Street. More recently, on the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers crash, Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, officially blessed this consensus by declaring the recession is "very likely over".

Back in 2007 we used to refer to the current crisis as the "U.S. subprime crisis". But while it was the area where troubles first emerged, the subprime mortgage sector turned out to be only the tip of the iceberg. Today, the Lehman crisis of mid September 2008 is still widely seen as the critical blunder that pushed the U.S. and world economies off the cliff. And yet, the Lehman bust may have been no more than just the trigger of an implosion of underlying financial… more

The man who would be known as Patient No. 1 emerged from routine open-heart surgery at Columbia University Medical Center in stable condition. Then he began to bleed uncontrollably. Surgeons rushed him back to the operating room to reopen his chest, but by the time they could stop the hemorrhaging, Patient No. 1 was barely breathing and in a coma.

On Aug. 15, 2000, shortly before he was discharged on his way to a nursing home, a physician wrote a… more

Our guest today is Adam Smith, a major figure of the Enlightenment who is widely considered to be the father of modern economic theory. He is a former professor at the University of Glasgow and the author of "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759) and "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776), his best-known book. Professor Smith joins us from Scotland.

While the economic crisis continues to overshadow other topics, world politics is undergoing rapid and dramatic changes. In areas from national security policy to trade, the Obama administration has repudiated Bush-era precedents significantly, if not rapidly enough for some critics on the left. The pressures on the administration to continue in the path followed by U.S. administrations since the fall of the Berlin Wall are intense, particularly in light of the victory of the hard-liners in Iran and new revelations about Iran's nuclear program. Even so,

"Trade is the, if not the elephant in the room, certainly some animal as yet to be defined that's in the room," said Douglas Rediker. ...

In the spring of 2005, David Stockman at last reaped the reward of the monopolist.

Stockman, who once served as Ronald Reagan's budget director, spent two decades on Wall Street preparing for this moment. After stints at Salomon Brothers and the Blackstone Group, Stockman in 1999 set up his own private investment fund, Heartland Industrial Partners. He then used Heartland to shape a set of companies -- mainly in the automotive sector -- each dedicated to dominating a particular group of production activities.

During last year's Republican presidential primary season, candidate Rudy Giuliani succinctly captured what millions of Americans think about health care abroad. "These countries that say they provide universal coverage -- they pay a price for it, you know," Giuliani told his audience. "They do it by rationing care, by long waiting lines, and by limiting, or I should say eliminating a patient's choice."

Echoing scholar Michael Lind, Tanenhaus assails the party of Lincoln as tragically metamorphosing into a “Republiconfederacy,'' with only the Deep South and ...