The leading environmentalist Lester Brown, at the New America Foundation Thursday, provided a new take on our environmental dangers that’s worth careful consideration for one reason: uniquely from an environmentalist in my experience, the short term danger is more salient than the long term one.

Speculation has begun on the successor to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, due to leave office when his 14 year term as Federal Reserve Board member ends in January 2006. Whoever his successor, he won’t have Greenspan’s enormous credibility with the markets, so monetary policy will never be the same. This is probably a good […]

According to economist David Ricardo, if the public sector deficit increases sharply, private saving can be expected to increase commensurately, thus ensuring that the capital is supplied to fund the deficit. Since total U.S. saving in 2003, public, corporate and private, was a mere 2 percent of gross domestic product, this doesn’t seem to have […]

Everybody appears to agree that the federal budget deficit, in this fiscal year approaching $500 billion, is a problem that needs to be dealt with, but not yet an urgent one. After November’s election, of course, the urgency of the problem will become fully apparent. It’s therefore with asking, with considerable trepidation, what solutions might […]