Bill Clinton often gets credit for being the architect of the longest economic expansion in U.S. history and for being the catalyst for 22+ million jobs that were created during his tenure. Based on this reputation, the conventional wisdom is that the U.S. can regain the prosperity of the Clinton era by electing a president with similar political values, who will advance similar policies. B. A. Marbue Brown challenges the conventional wisdom by presenting a fact-based analysis, which shows that five factors combined to create an economic perfect storm during the Clinton years, and that the President had little if any influence over those factors. He also shows that several popular beliefs about the administration's economic record are founded on myths. Then leveraging lessons learned from his analysis, he adds prescriptions that policymakers can use to drive economic growth in more typical circumstances. Almost 300 citations back up his conclusions. B. A. Marbue Brown is a veteran of the Information Technology (IT) industry with more than 20 years experience. Over the course of his career, he has held senior positions with IT industry leaders Microsoft Corporation, Cisco Systems and Telcordia Technologies. Mr. Brown is an accomplished market research expert, whose work has been published in The Handbook of Business Strategy and Marketing Research Magazine. He has consulted extensively in the Communications industry, particularly with Fortune 100 telecommunications companies. He specializes in analyzing IT market and technology trends to formulate competitive business strategies. He is also highly regarded for helping companies improve business performance through advanced customer research analytics.

How one of the greatest economic expansions in history sowed the seeds of its own collapse. With his best-selling Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph E. Stiglitz showed how a misplaced faith in free-market ideology led to many of the recent problems suffered by the developing nations. Here he turns the same light on the United States. The Roaring Nineties offers not only an insider's illuminating view of policymaking but also a compelling case that even the Clinton administration was too closely tied to the financial community—that along with enormous economic success in the nineties came the seeds of the destruction visited on the economy at the end of the decade. This groundbreaking work by the Nobel Prize-winning economist argues that much of what we understood about the 1990s' prosperity is wrong, that the theories that have been used to guide world leaders and anchor key business decisions were fundamentally outdated. Yes, jobs were created, technology prospered, inflation fell, and poverty was reduced. But at the same time the foundation was laid for the economic problems we face today. Trapped in a near-ideological commitment to free markets, policymakers permitted accounting standards to slip, carried deregulation further than they should have, and pandered to corporate greed. These chickens have now come home to roost. The paperback includes a new introduction that reviews the continued failure of the Bush administration's policies, which have taken a bad situation and made it worse.

Michael Meeropol argues that the ballooning of the federal budget deficit was not a serious problem in the 1980s, nor were the successful recent efforts to get it under control the basis for the prosperous economy of the mid-1990s. In this controversial book, the author provides a close look at what actually happened to the American economy during the years of the "Reagan Revolution" and reveals that the huge deficits had no negative effect on the economy. It was the other policies of the Reagan years--high interest rates to fight inflation, supply-side tax cuts, reductions in regulation, increased advantages for investors and the wealthy, the unraveling of the safety net for the poor--that were unsuccessful in generating more rapid growth and other economic improvements. Meeropol provides compelling evidence of the failure of the U.S. economy between 1990 and 1994 to generate rising incomes for most of the population or improvements in productivity. This caused, first, the electoral repudiation of President Bush in 1992, followed by a repudiation of President Clinton in the 1994 Congressional elections. The Clinton administration made a half-hearted attempt to reverse the Reagan Revolution in economic policy, but ultimately surrendered to the Republican Congressional majority in 1996 when Clinton promised to balance the budget by 2000 and signed the welfare reform bill. The rapid growth of the economy in 1997 caused surprisingly high government revenues, a dramatic fall in the federal budget deficit, and a brief euphoria evident in an almost uncontrollable stock market boom. Finally, Meeropol argues powerfully that the next recession, certain to come before the end of 1999, will turn the predicted path to budget balance and millennial prosperity into a painful joke on the hubris of public policymakers. Accessibly written as a work of recent history and public policy as much as economics, this book is intended for all Americans interested in issues of economic policy, especially the budget deficit and the Clinton versus Congress debates. No specialized training in economics is needed. "A wonderfully accessible discussion of contemporary American economic policy. Meeropol demonstrates that the Reagan-era policies of tax cuts and shredded safety nets, coupled with strident talk of balanced budgets, have been continued and even brought to fruition by the neo-liberal Clinton regime." --Frances Fox Piven, Graduate School, City University of New York Michael Meeropol is Chair and Professor of Economics, Western New England College.

Foreword by President George W. Bush With contributions from world renowned economists and Nobel prizewinners, The 4% Solution is a blueprint for restoring America’s economic health The United States is reaching a pivotal point in its economic history. Millions of Americans owe more on their homes than they are worth, long-term unemployment is alarmingly high, and the Congressional Budget Office is projecting a sustainable growth rate of only 2.3%—a full percentage point below the average for the past sixty years. Unless a turnaround comes quickly, the United States could be mired in debt for years to come and millions of Americans will be pushed to the sidelines of the economy. The 4% Solution offers clear and unflinching ideas on how to revive America’s economy. It sets a positive economic goal and asks some of the top economic minds on how to achieve it. With a focus on removing government constraints, The 4% Solution defines the policies that will allow Americans to save, invest, and create the jobs that the United States needs. The 4% Solution draws on the best minds in the business, including five Nobel laureates: · Robert E. Lucas, Jr., on the history and future of economic growth · Gary S. Becker on why we need immigrants in order to grow · Edward Prescott on the cost (to growth) of the welfare state · Vernon Smith on why housing leads us into and out of recessions · Myron Scholes on why we need to innovate in order to grow the economy

“I wrote this book because I love my country and I'm concerned about our future,” writes Bill Clinton. “As I often said when I first ran for President in 1992, America at its core is an idea—the idea that no matter who you are or where you're from, if you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have the freedom and opportunity to pursue your own dreams and leave your kids a country where they can chase theirs.” In Back to Work, Clinton details how we can get out of the current economic crisis and lay a foundation for long-term prosperity. He offers specific recommendations on how we can put people back to work and create new businesses, increase bank lending and corporate investment, double our exports, and restore our manufacturing base. He supports President Obama’s emphasis on green technology, saying that change in the way we produce and consume energy is the strategy most likely to spark a fast-growing economy and enhance our national security. Clinton also says that we need both a strong economy and a smart government working together to restore prosperity and progress. He demonstrates that whenever we’ve given in to the temptation to blame government for our problems, we’ve lost our commitment to shared prosperity, balanced growth, financial responsibility, and investment in the future. That has led our nation into trouble because there are some things we have to do together. For example, he says, “Our ability to compete in the twenty-first century is dependent on our willingness to invest in infrastructure: we need faster broadband, a state-of-the-art national electrical grid, modernized water and sewer systems, and the best airports, trains, roads, and bridges. “There is no evidence that we can succeed in the twenty-first century with an antigovernment strategy,” writes Clinton, “with a philosophy grounded in ‘You’re on your own’ rather than ‘We’re all in this together.’” Clinton believes that conflict between government and the private sector has proved to be remarkably good politics, but it has produced bad policies, giving us a weak economy with few jobs, growing income inequality and poverty, and a decline in our competitive position. In the real world, cooperation works much better than conflict, and “we need victories in the real world.”

Covers trends from 1957 to 1995.

A revealing and often shocking new look at one of our most successful presidents—and how his policies reshaped our place on the world stage.

“an excellent new book” — Paul Krugman, The New York Times History, not ideology, holds the key to growth. Brilliantly written and argued, Concrete Economics shows how government has repeatedly reshaped the American economy ever since Alexander Hamilton’s first, foundational redesign. This book does not rehash the sturdy and long-accepted arguments that to thrive, entrepreneurial economies need a broad range of freedoms. Instead, Steve Cohen and Brad DeLong remedy our national amnesia about how our economy has actually grown and the role government has played in redesigning and reinvigorating it throughout our history. The government not only sets the ground rules for entrepreneurial activity but directs the surges of energy that mark a vibrant economy. This is as true for present-day Silicon Valley as it was for New England manufacturing at the dawn of the nineteenth century. The authors’ argument is not one based on abstract ideas, arcane discoveries, or complex correlations. Instead it is based on the facts—facts that were once well known but that have been obscured in a fog of ideology—of how the US economy benefited from a pragmatic government approach to succeed so brilliantly. Understanding how our economy has grown in the past provides a blueprint for how we might again redesign and reinvigorate it today, for such a redesign is sorely needed.