Dubya's Double Dip?

If the story of the current U.S. economy were made into a movie, it would look something like "55 Days at Peking." A ragtag group of ordinary people — America's consumers — is besieged by a rampaging horde, the forces of recession. To everyone's surprise, they have held their ground.

But they can't hold out forever. Will the rescue force — resurgent business investment — get there in time?
[read more]

----------

Is the Big-Business Era Over?
The public sure thinks it should be.

It may be true that the era of big government being over is over, as conservative Christopher Caldwell has argued, done in by President Bush's reluctance to challenge popular spending programs. But it may also be true that the era of big business being over has just begun.

By that, I don't mean that people are ready to storm the barricades and hang the assorted CEOs (though I suppose there might be a hanging-in-effigy here or there). What's happening is much more serious: the loss of a secular faith. Once the public believed that big business, while guilty of occasional excesses, could more or less be trusted, and that its activities were the chief source of social wealth and progress. Because of this, they let the dynamic duo of big business and the market do their thing: If government tried to get in the way, it would just do more harm than good.

That was the era of big business; now it's done. The seemingly endless wave of corporate scandals and the collapsing stock market have convinced the public that big business can't be trusted to regulate itself or to deliver prosperity. It needs help and, realistically, that help has to come from government, the very folks who were supposed to get out of the way.
[read more]

----------

Fundamental Flaws:
Paul O'Neill Doesn't Understand His Job