Putting a muzzle on free speech
Free speech is not selective speech, respectable speech or popular speech. Free speech does not exist unless it can include speech that you--and perhaps most people--despise. People must have, as...
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Stock options a `good idea gone bad’
As the Enron Corp. scandal broadens, we may miss the forest for the trees. The multiplying investigations have created a massive whodunit. Who destroyed documents? Who misled investors? Who twisted...
Feeling a little nervous about your funds?
The American economy has officially entered what promises to be the worst recession since the early 1980s and, conceivably, the worst since World War II. But you'd hardly know from...
Deflation bogeyman of economics
What do computer chips, coffee, oil and airline fares all have in common? Their prices are falling. It is a mark of the changed economic outlook that deflation--a general decline...
The hazards of covering terrorism
The news media rank as one of the big winners of Sept. 11: terrorism gave us a fabulous story and restored our seriousness of purpose. Because this good fortune seems...
Consumers key to economic stimulus
If you are designing an "economic stimulus," you need some notion of what you're doing and why. The idea is not just to throw money at the economy on the...
Consumers key to economic stimulus
If you are designing an "economic stimulus," you need some notion of what you're doing and why. The idea is not just to throw money at the economy on the...
Getting rid of our debilitating oil problem
If politics is the art of the possible, then things should be possible now that weren't before Sept. 11. Or perhaps not. For three decades, Americans have only haphazardly tried...
Can a liberal be fair at the helm?
We in the press are routinely self-righteous, holding others--politicians, public officials and corporate executives--to exacting standards of truthfulness, performance and conflict of interest. But we often refuse to impose comparable...
Rise and slump of the almighty dollar
There is hardly an economic subject more dreary or baffling to ordinary people than "the dollar." Yet, the "strong dollar" has now triggered fierce debate, with critics urging that the...