Income inequality is at levels not seen for a century. Many working families are struggling to get by, only kept afloat by Medicaid and food stamps. The federal minimum wage is just $7.25 per hour—below the poverty line even for a family of two…

Forty years after John Bogle launched the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, passive investment funds now account for about one-third of the mutual fund and ETF market. You would think this would pose a threat to traditional asset managers that charge hefty fees for actively managed mutual funds, and this…

There was one moment, when I was finishing up the manuscript of Economism, that I thought someone had already said what I was trying to say in the book. This is what I read:

“The beauty and the simplicity of such a theory are so great that it is easy to forget…

A friend pointed me toward an op-ed in The Guardian by George Monbiot titled “Neoliberalism — The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems.” The basic argument is that there is an ideology that has had a pervasive influence on the shaping of the contemporary world. Its policy…

Jeb Hensarling and the Allure of Economism

The Wall Street Journal has a profile up on Mike Crapo and Jeb Hensarling, the key…

Over at the Washington Post, Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute is upset that people are picking on Economics 101. He singles out Paul Krugman and Noah Smith in particular for claiming that “the pages of economics 101 textbooks are filled with errors, trivia and…

Noah Smith begins his latest Bloomberg column this way:

Stanford historian Ian Morris is fond of saying that “each age gets the thought it needs.” According to this maxim, ideas like the Enlightenment, communism or even Christianity are a product of the…

James Kwak is a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, where he teaches business law and corporate finance. He co-authored 13 Bankers, a New York Times bestseller chronicling the rise of the financial sector and the causes of the recent financial crisis, and White House Burning…