Capital Offense - 9780470520673

For the last thirty years, it has been the mantra of Washington, Wall Street, and economic academia: The fastest way to economic growth is to make financial markets happy. The few economists and government watchdogs who took exception to this theory or pointed out some of the dangerous trends that accompanied it were either castigated, dismissed as cranks, or ignored. How could this happen? How could five successive presidents from both parties pursue and expand an economic policy that hollowed out the American economy and produced the worst economic catastrophe since 1929?

In Capital Offense, Newsweek's Michael Hirsh takes you inside the lives of the key people who gave us this era of free-market finance, beginning with its creator and earliest promoter, economist Milton Friedman, and its adoption by the conservative movement. He explores Friedman's vast influence on the Reagan administration, where his theories first became government policy (known as Reaganomics and Supply Side economics), and follows its continuation through the first and second Bush administrations, with the Clinton era sandwiched in between. In addition, he explains why this disaster-inducing ideology is still alive and well under President Barack Obama.

Hirsh takes you inside high-level, closed-door conversations of top White House advisors and administration officials such as Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, Paul O'Neill, and others. He illuminates key figures and lively interpersonal clashes, including the fierce and ongoing conflict between Larry Summers and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz, a staunch opponent of free-market theory. He also offers crucial insights on why President Obama took so long to work on the economy---and why his policies, while far better than nothing, may not be nearly enough to sustain a long-term recovery.

This solidly researched and skillfully reported expose catalogs the missteps of three decades of fiscal, regulatory, and financial recklessness, including the dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act, the S&L debacle, Enron, and the subprime mortgage meltdown. It also explains why the Clinton administration failed to heed the warning sounded by the Asian financial crisis of 1998 and why then Treasury Secretary Rubin dismissed a very explicit warning about the dangers of a new type of financial instrument known as derivatives.

As we struggle to emerge from the financial crisis, Wall Street's continued dominance of the global economy remains a significant barrier to recovery, and America's reemergence as a major manufacturing and industrial power seems ever more unlikely. Capital Offense combines a clear and insightful account of how we reached this point with thoughtful suggestions of what can be done to change course.