On Economy, Pessimism Abounds Twenty years ago, in 1990, the American economy was in the third year of a deep recession. It was impossible to find a job. The 1980s housing bubble had popped; high-end housing prices in New York City dropped by 80 percent. Then, as now, the president seemed oblivious, aloof and clueless. Two years later, with no recovery in sight, angry voters turned him out of office. But help was on the way. Something called the World Wide Web appeared in 1991. Two years later, Mosaic—the first graphic web browser, which would evolve into Netscape—was introduced. The Internet boom began. It flamed out seven years later, but in the meantime tens of millions of Americans collected new, higher paychecks. They spent their windfall. Consumer spending exploded. So did government tax revenues. When Bill Clinton left office in 2001, the Office of Management and Budget was projecting a $5 trillion surplus over the next ten years—enough to pay…

More American Chickens Come Home to Roost Believe it or not, I don’t scour the headlines looking for tragedies and atrocities to blame on the United States. But that’s how it often works out. When the big earthquake ravaged Haiti earlier this year, it would have been a relief to look at the resulting pain and despair and see nothing more than the terrible result of tectonic movements. It would have been nice to be able to blame nature. Or France. But France’s crimes were over a century old. The freshly spilt blood in Haiti was and remains on the hands of the Americans who raped the Caribbean nation throughout the 20th century, and opened the 21st by keeping relief supplies and rescue teams out of the disaster zone so long that the people trapped under the rubble had bled or starved to death. Now it’s Kyrgyzstan’s turn to fall apart as the result of American malfeasance. The images coming…

The Case for Nationalization The Supreme Court says that corporations have the same rights as individuals. When they misbehave, shouldn’t they face consequences as serious as those imposed upon an individual? It goes without saying that a person who commits a crime ought to face punishment proportional to the offense. Large and midsize corporations, which employ thousands of employees, have far vaster reach and power than even the wealthiest ordinary citizens. So their crimes can be breathtaking in scope. The 1984 industrial catastrophe at a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India killed 15,000 people. An additional 200,000 have since suffered serious injuries. Compared to the boards of directors of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, which bought the company in 2001, Ted Bundy was small potatoes. Unlike small-time serial killers, however, corporations get away with murder. For at least a year, management of the Toyota auto company knew that brakes in millions of its cars might fail. A 2009 ABC News investigation…