Roundup: Media's Take

John B. Judis: The best books to help you make sense of Marx, Keynes, the Great Depression, and how we got where we are now

... 1. The current crisis. I was warning my colleagues of an encroaching disaster a year ago, because I was reading the columns and articles of Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, Larry Summers, and Dean Baker. They were on top of this when Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke were still telling everyone not to worry. Of the current books I've read (and I haven't read many), I'm very high on Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf's Fixing Global Finance, George Cooper's The Origin of Financial Crises, Jamie

Scott McLeod: Obama Mideast Watch ... Why Dennis Ross?

Middle East watchers are trying to follow a behind the scenes contest for Barack Obama's ear when it comes to the region. The winner could become the incoming administration's single most influential advisor on the area--perhaps Obama's Middle East czar. Obama has properly emphasized that as president he will set the policy, and his subordinates will be tasked with implementing it. Yet his choice of Middle East guru-- a special envoy, or whatever the title may be-- will be an important signal of

Holman Jenkins Jr.: Get Ready for a Lost Decade

How many times have you heard that we've learned the lessons of the Great Depression and won't repeat the same mistakes? That statement is a bit of a false promise, since there was only one Great Depression, and many, many steps were taken and not taken, with no chance to rerun the experiment over and over to figure out what worked, or would have worked, and what didn't. Letting hundreds of banks collapse, destroying savings and confidence, is one mistake we won't make

Marian Salzman: Baby boomers out, 'cuspers' in

[Marian Salzman is chief marketing officer and a partner at Porter Novelli Worldwide and is co-author of "The Future of Men" and "Next Now." ] Rarely has there been a year when so many things went out of style in such a short time: not just investment bankers, gas-guzzling vehicles, corporate jets, conspicuous consumption and political polarization, but also a whole generation. After strutting and tub-thumping and preening their way across the high g

George Bridges: We must refight the battles of the 1970s

[George Bridges has written articles published in The Daily Telegraph.] Boxing Day is for eating leftovers. Today, Britain tucks into cold turkey. And we'd better get used to a spot of austerity. We are facing a crisis as bad, if not worse, than that of the 1970s. The lights might not be going out and our dead are being buried, but don't be fooled. Our economy and most public institutions are, in Whitehall-speak, not fit for purpose. Unless Britain has a radical change of direction,

Joshua Neuman: What Happened to Kwanzaa?

[Joshua Neuman is the Publisher of Heeb Magazine. A graduate of Brown University and the Harvard Divinity School, he has taught undergraduate courses in the Philosophy of Religion at New York University, written for Slate, eMusic and ESPN and appeared on VH1, A & E and National Public Radio. His first book, The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies, was published by St. Martin's Press in 2005.] Long before the giant mall usurped the American urban landscape, Hallmark was cheapening ou

John O'Sullivan: Conservative Snobs Are Wrong About Palin

[Mr. O'Sullivan is executive editor of Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty in Prague, and a former special adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. His book, "The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister" (Regnery), has just been published in paperback.] Being listed in fourth place for Time magazine's "Person of the Year," as Sarah Palin was for 2008, sounds a little like being awarded the Order of Purity (Fourth Class). But it testifies to something importan

Andrew B. Wilson: Thatcher Wouldn't Have Gone Wobbly on Detroit

[Mr. Wilson, a St. Louis-based writer, was Business Week's London bureau chief from 1981 to 1985.] ... The government must do something, and something fairly big, to jump-start the economy, an economist friend told me. His point was that the private sector is too shell-shocked to climb out of the hole it is now in, and government needs to take the lead. He also quoted the old shibboleth among economists -- the "fallacy of composition" -- which argues that what might be a g

Tony Blankley: The shocking religious bias of textbooks in favor of Muslims

[Tony Blankley is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington.] I recently read a book that deserves the widest possible readership: "The Trouble with Textbooks -- Distorting History and Religion," by Gary A. Tobin and Dennis R. Ybarra. I never have met or talked with either of these gentlemen, but I can't say enough good things about this book. For all who believe that there is a fairly objective rendition of history that we are obliged to teach our

Froma Harrop: Welcome to 'Nepotism Nation'

Suppose in 2002 the Kennedys (or another "political dynasty") had a son or daughter or cousin they wanted to slip into Illinois' contested U.S. Senate seat. You know the arguments: powerful family, name recognition, can raise bags of money. Done deal. Do not try to resist. If that had happened, there would be no Barack Obama. He of the deceased mother, vanished father and wife whose dad worked at the city water plant wouldn't have had a chance. He had no powerful uncles to

Clive Aslet: Remember Zimbabwe's pensioners

[Clive Aslet is Editor at Large of Country Life] It is heart-rending to know that any group of elderly, respectable people should be reduced to spending Christmas in penury. But when they are former Crown servants for whom the governments admits a moral responsibility, the blood boils. Zimbabwe's forgotten pensioners are such a case. These are individuals who were recruited to run the civil service of Southern Rhodesia, as it then was, before independence.

Jon Talton: Democracy Wounded as Newspapers Cut Washington Bureaus

[Jon Talton is a journalist and author living in Seattle. He writes the “On the Economy” column for the Seattle Times and is proprietor of the blog Rogue Columnist.] The New York Times recently wrote about the shrinking Washington bureaus of American newspapers. Cox Newspapers, Advance Publications and Copley have all shut down their operations, along with scores of other papers. Those that remain are drastically smaller. Hundreds of experienced journalists have been thrown out of work, “

NYT Editorial: The World According to Cheney

Vice President Dick Cheney has a parting message for Americans: They should quit whining about all the things he and President Bush did to undermine the rule of law, erode the balance of powers between the White House and Congress, abuse prisoners and spy illegally on Americans. After all, he said, Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln did worse than that. So Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush managed to stop short of repeating two of the most outrageous abuses of power in American history —

Leonard Downie Jr.: Could We Uncover Watergate Today?

[Leonard Downie Jr. was executive editor of The Washington Post for 17 years. His novel, "The Rules of the Game," will be published next month.] The death last week of W. Mark Felt -- Bob Woodward's secret source, indelibly dubbed "Deep Throat," who played such a crucial role in this newspaper's Watergate reporting -- coincided with the appearance of Richard M. Nixon, as played by Frank Langella, on local movie screens. As I watched Langella's Nixon being interro

Joel Achenbach: Just how big is that stimulus package?

For those of you impoverished souls who didn't see the print edition today, there's a great graphic on the front page showing the relative cost of big-ticket items in our nation's history. It's a way of trying to get a mental grip on the dimensions of this $850 billion "stimulus package." At this point in the economic crisis, the numbers all blend together and lose their meaning. Is $850 billion really all that much? Sure, sounds like quite the econoaphrodisiac, but what if it fizzles?

Louis Uchitelle: A Trap in Obama’s Spending Plan

As the recession deepens, President-elect Barack Obama is gearing up to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on public investment projects, counting on them to lift the economy, as they have in the past. But this time that may not happen. Public spending, American style, has worked best in good times, when people have jobs and executives are eager to invest. A new public highway is soon lined — in good times — with stores and malls filled with consumers. A dollar spent by governmen

TPM: The striking similarities between Richard Whitney and Bernard Madeoff

Certainly many details differ. But, as TPM Reader EG notes, the story of Richard Whitney (an overview of whose life I've copied from his wikipedia entry) was at least broadly reminiscent of the unfolding story of Bernard Madoff ... Richard Whitney (August 1, 1888 - December 5, 1974), was an American financier, president of the New York Stock Exchange 1930-1935, and a convicted embezzler.... At the same time that Richard Whitney was achieving great success, his broth

John Dean: Memo to President-Elect Obama ... Change the Nature of the Response to the Blagojevich Scandal

December 12, 2008 President-Elect Barack Obama Office of the President-Elect Chicago, IL Dear President-Elect Obama: I am writing with a suggestion that might help to remove you and your new administration from the still metastasizing scandal of Governor Blagojevich trying to sell your senate seat. Needless to say, until the news media is satisfied that you and your new administration have no complicity in this matter, they will continue to fo

Walter E. Williams: Why should the Congress be limited to 435 members?

[Walter E. Williams is a nationally syndicated columnist and a professor of economics at George Mason University.] The Federalist Papers, written by James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, are the documents most frequently referred to when trying to get a feel for the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution. One such intention is found in Federalist 56 where Madison says, "it seems to give the fullest assurance, that a representative for every 30

Alan Dershowitz: Law for Bigots

[Alan M. Dershowitz is a Professor of Law at Harvard. His most recent book The Case Against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand In The Way of Peace is being published by Wiley at the end of this month.] Imagine the United Nations appointing David Duke to report on how blacks are victimizing whites, or Hugo Chavez to report on American foreign policy, or Mohammad Ahmadinejad to investigate whether the Holocaust occurred. The UN has done something comparable b