Congratulations to Swami Aiyar, research fellow at Cato’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, for being named among the “Top 10 Opinion Makers” in India by the Indian Express this Sunday. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen ranked first, Swami was in eighth place because of his style of writing “economics for the common man.” Swami’s weekly column, “Swaminomics,” appears in the Times of India.
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Tucker Carlson Joins the Cato Institute
![Media Name: be-tucker-01.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/download-remote-images/www.cato.org/172395922072/be-tucker-01.jpg?itok=NPaiFSAv)
Noted columnist and television commentator Tucker Carlson has joined the Cato Institute as a senior fellow.
“I’ve admired the Cato Institute since I first read its publications, passed around like samizdat on my college campus,” said Carlson of his new affiliation. “When I moved to Washington, I discovered that my impression of Cato had been right: The people I met there were some of the smartest, bravest and most interesting in the city. While others are blinded by expedience or group think, Cato stands on principle, always. I’m honored to be affiliated with it.”
Carlson will use his initial time with Cato to focus on writing a book on the state of the American polity. Through other writings as well as media and public speaking appearances, he will also seek to educate the broader public about how the libertarian philosophy differs from the standard liberal and conservative orthodoxies embodied in the two main U.S. political parties.
“Tucker Carlson is one of the most effective communicators of libertarian ideas in the nation,” said Cato founder and president Ed Crane. “We are delighted to have him associated with Cato as a senior fellow.”
Carlson was co-host of the staple CNN debate program “Crossfire” and also had his own programs on MSNBC (“Tucker”) and PBS (“Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered”), as well as appearing regularly on numerous other news programs. Though sometimes showcased by these networks as the “conservative” point of view, Carlson became a dependable critic of numerous Bush administration policies, including wasteful spending and the war in Iraq.
After graduating with a degree in history from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., Carlson worked as a print journalist and went on to write for Vanity Fair, Policy Review, Esquire, The Weekly Standard, Reader’s Digest, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.
Last month, noted civil libertarian Nat Hentoff joined Cato as a senior fellow.
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This Week at Cato: ‘Obama and Presidential Power: Change or Continuity?’
Will President Obama follow through on his campaign promises about executive power and oversee a more modest presidency that recognizes constitutional limitations? Or will the new administration end up expanding the powers of the presidential office?
Please join us Wednesday, February 25th at 12:00 PM to discuss the prospects and possibilities for the presidency in the Obama era.
The forum will feature Louis Fisher, Specialist on the Constitution, Law Library of Congress; and Jeffrey Rosen, Professor, The George Washington University School of Law. It will be moderated by Gene Healy, Vice President, Cato Institute.
Reserve your seat for this free event today. Lunch will be served after the event. For those who cannot attend, the forum will be simulcast live online.
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New on YouTube: Roosevelt v. Reagan
Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz debates Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress, over the legacies of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.
In light of the current economic crisis, who serves as the better role model for President Obama?
For more videos, subscribe to Cato’s YouTube channel.
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The U.S. Didn’t Cause the World Recession
In the Washington Post, Ricardo Caballero of MIT has a novel and promising idea about “How to Lift a Falling Economy.” Unfortunately, he echoes the mantra that all the world’s economic problems can be traced to the U.S. in general, and to big U.S. banks in particular. “Already,” he says, “this illness has spread to the global economy.”
Already? Industrial production in Japan began collapsing in November 2007, two months ahead of the U.S., and the Japanese industrial decline has been twice as fast.
Unlike the U.S., real GDP began falling in the second quarter of 2008 in Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. By no coincidence, that was when the price of oil rose as high as $145 a barrel. Soaring oil prices raise the cost of production and distribution for many industries, and reduce real household incomes and therefore consumption. Nine of the ten postwar U.S. recessions were preceded by a major spike in the price of oil.
In a piece for the Claremont Review of Books (written last November), I conclude , “This recession is not just a U.S. problem, not just about housing, and not just financial.”
Compare the decline in real GDP over the past 4 quarters (from The Economist):
U.S. |
-0.2% |
France |
-1.0 |
Germany |
-1.6 |
Britain |
-1.8 |
Italy |
-2.6 |
Japan |
-4.6 |
‘Tons of Jobs’ Opening Up in D.C.
Business Week reports that the national capital area is barely sensing the recession:
Washington is getting a boost from government spending to fight the recession and fix the financial system, as well as the ongoing expenses of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and promoting homeland security. While President Barack Obama pointedly left Washington for Denver to sign the $787 billion stimulus package on Feb. 17, locals expect the metro area to garner a big share of the dollars.
“Oversight alone will (mean) tons of new jobs,” enthuses Jill Landsman, a spokeswoman for the Northern Virginia Assn. of Realtors, who says the pace of home sales has picked up over the past year even as prices have continued to fall.
Cato analysts propose to slash jobs in Washington–at least 100 agencies and programs [pdf]. It’s no big mystery why tons of people in the capital oppose Cato proposals.
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New Podcast: ‘Prospects for Drug Policy Reform’
Federal drug policy has changed only slightly in the last 30 years, but Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Aliance, an organization that promotes policy alternatives to the drug war, says he’s optimistic about the future.
He spoke at the Cato Institute this week to address the increasing violence in Mexico between the government and drug cartels. In today’s Cato Daily Podcast, Nadelmann discusses how the nation’s approach to drug policy could change under the new administration:
I’m feeling strangely optimistic these days. I think part of it is that Obama’s coming into office has just opened up a sense of something new being possible… These Democrats—Pelosi, George Miller, Henry Waxman, John Conyers, Barney Frank, and others—they understand that the drug war is a failure. They’re not going to show real leadership on this issue in the short-term future, but there’s at least an understanding about what’s so fundamentally wrong.