The Predator State

The cult of the free market has dominated economic policy-talk since the Reagan revolution. Tax cuts and small government, monetarism, balanced budgets, deregulation, and free trade are the core elements of a dogma so successful that even many liberals accept it. Meanwhile, conservatives like George W. Bush have abandoned it, and the Reagan true believers have abandoned Bush. Here, James K. Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist, dissects the remains of Reaganism and shows how Bush and company had no choice except to dump them. He then explores the true nature of the Bush regime: a "corporate republic," bringing the mentality of big business to public life, and a predator state, intent not on reducing government but rather on diverting public cash into private hands. The real problems and challenges--inequality, climate change, the infrastructure deficit, the subprime crisis--cannot be solved by free markets. They will be solved only with planning, standards and other policies that transcend and even transform markets.--From publisher description.