“The blow by blow story of a president and his team wasting the ‘opportunity’ of the Great Recession to change the fundamentals of the economy.” —Steven Brill, New York Times–bestselling author This book is the compelling story of President Obama’s domestic policy decisions made between September 2008 and his inauguration on January 20, 2009. Barack Obama determined the fate of his presidency before he took office. His momentous decisions led to Donald Trump, for Obama the worst person imaginable, taking his place eight years later. This book describes these decisions and discusses how the results could have been different. Based on dozens of interviews with actors in the Obama transition, as well as the author’s personal observations, this book provides unique commentary of those defining decisions of winter 2008–2009. A decade later, the ramifications of the Great Recession and the role of government in addressing the crisis animate the ideological battle between progressivism and neoliberalism in the Democratic Party and the radical direction of the Republican Party. As many seek the presidency in the November 2020 election, all candidates and of course the eventual winner will face decisions that may be as critical and difficult as those confronted by Barack Obama. This book aims to provide the guidance of history. “A powerfully lucid, compelling and surprising achievement . . . makes a subtle but irresistible argument that, given the conservative undertow of American politics, liberals and progressives who are serious about change can’t just wing it but must prepare detailed economic policy analyses and prescriptions long in advance of taking power.” —Congressman Jamie Raskin, Representative from Maryland’s 8th District

At the onset of the Great Recession, as house prices sank and joblessness soared, many commentators concluded that the economic convictions behind the disaster would now be consigned to history. Yet in the harsh light of a new day, attacks against government intervention and the global drive for austerity are as strong as ever. Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste is the definitive account of the wreckage of what passes for economic thought, and how neoliberal ideas were used to solve the very crisis they had created. Now updated with a new afterword, Philip Mirowski’s sharp and witty work provides a roadmap for those looking to escape today’s misguided economic dogma.

This book takes a measured look at the 'crisis of waste' in modern society and it does so historically, sociologically and critically. It tells stories about past and present ‘crises’ of waste and puts them in their appropriate social and industrial contexts. From Charles Dickens to Don DeLillo, from the internal combustion engine to fish fingers, from kitchen grease to the Tour de France this book digs deep into society’s dust piles and emerges with untold treasures of the imagination.

In Securities Regulation Reassessed, Paul Mahoney shows that policy responses to financial crises are broadly similar across place and time: political actors, hoping to avoid blame for a financial crisis, create a narrative of market failure, arguing that misbehavior by securities market participants, rather than prior policy errors, is the primary cause of the crisis. Politically obliged regulators craft reforms that purport to solve problems which are either non-existent or only tangentially related to the crisis; yet they increase the complexity and expense of compliance, resulting in consolidation and concentration of market share in the hands of already leading financial firms. Securities Regulation Reassessed illustrates these points primarily but not exclusively with evidence from the New Deal-era securities reforms in the United States. Against the conventional wisdom that regards the New Deal reforms as successful, Mahoney provides substantial countervailing evidence, showing instead that Congress’s diagnoses were systematically inaccurate and its remedies reduced competition in the securities industry. Looking farther into history, the work treats several key episodes prior to the New Deal, including the English financial crises of 1697 and 1720 and the "blue sky” era of the 1910s and 1920s in the United States. Finally, Mahoney considers the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 from the same analytical perspective. Mahoney finds a predictable pattern for efforts at securities reform: they require huge effort to enact, and yield little objectively measurable payoff and some objectively measurable harm.

Two-time New York Times bestselling author Jason Chaffetz is back to blow the lid off the Democrats’ attempts to spend unparalleled trillions and rewrite our election laws while never letting us get back to normal. Why did the left think they could solve the pandemic with burning cities, closed beaches, blue state budget bailouts, and mail-in ballots nobody asked for? The coronavirus has been a disaster for America, but it’s been an unprecedented opportunity for the left. In They Never Let a Crisis Goes to Waste, Jason Chaffetz delves into progressive efforts to leverage crises to force their priorities into law. Whether the crisis is legitimate, fabricated, or exaggerated, the solution is always the same: more government, less individual freedom, higher spending, higher taxes. He explores how disaster liberalism subjugates individual freedoms to political expediency in times of crisis, and how Republicans need to be ready for next time. Because when we allow government power to become unlimited in a crisis, the crises will become unlimited. Across the board, Democrat leaders exploited the pandemic to achieve their agenda, invoking disaster liberalism to justify unpopular and unconstitutional power grabs. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a gun control bill on April 10—three weeks into pandemic—because he wouldn’t have to put up with tens of thousands of protestors. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers announced he was making it a criminal offense to attend church or go to work, only to see his overreach struck down by the state supreme court. Nancy Pelosi rammed through a $3 trillion liberal wish list filled with proposals unrelated to COVID-19, that immediately died in the Senate. If not for the courts and local media, many of the Democrats’ schemes would have successfully been implemented. As it was, many were—and many of the most egregious violations of Americans’ rights were celebrated across the left. In They Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste, Chaffetz uncovers Democrats’ game plan and calls upon all Americans to protect ourselves against future incursions. If we don’t pay attention, the left will use every crisis to implement its radical plan, steadily eroding the freedoms we all hold dear. Only the American people have the power to stop the left’s next power grab, as Chaffetz shows in this powerful, thoroughly-researched call to action.

Invoking America's greatest leaders, Robert Kuttner explains how Obama must be a transformative president--or a failed one--a president who must succeed in fundamentally changing our economy, society, and democracy for the better.

This study examines rising alarm over waste of natural resources, and its use by Theodore Roosevelt and his administration to further objectives of conservation and an American form of empire. These objectives encompassed both preservationist and utilitarian approaches, centred on efficiency, but interpreting efficiency in social and political rather than economic terms. These policies revealed an emerging idea of environmental 'habitability' that presaged modern interest in sustainability.