(Transaction Publishers, 2004)
“Give me a one-armed economist,” President Harry S. Truman once demanded as he vented his frustration over economic advisers who offer straightforward recommendations, then hedge their bets by tacking on a slew of caveats, often beginning with the phrase “but, on the other hand … ”
Now, Murray L. Weidenbaum, Ph.D., chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s first Council of Economic Advisers, has published a compilation of essays that offers the clear, no-nonsense economic policy analysis that Truman craved.
The book provides a distillation of Weidenbaum’s writings over four decades. His essays cover six major clusters of public policy issues: economic policy, government programs, business decision-making, government regulation, the defense sector and the international economy.
For Weidenbaum, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor, the book offers a personal, if eclectic, representation of his outlook on critical public policy issues. He avoids doctrinaire positions, be they Keynesian or monetarist or supply side or libertarian, while providing readers with lucid economic analyses of the major issues of our time.
“Murray Weidenbaum has brought solid economic understanding and a talent for clear expression to analyses of a wide range of public and private policy problems,” writes Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve System. “Written over the course of a remarkable and varied career as a scholar, official and participant in varied businesses, this collection of concise essays is full of insights and lessons as fresh and relevant to issues of today as to the time they were written.”
Weidenbaum’s book title reference to Truman’s views on economists is apt for several reasons. Truman was the first president to appoint a council of economic advisers, but unlike many of his successors, Truman was known to follow the advice of his council.
Weidenbaum, on the other hand, stepped down from Reagan’s economic council in late 1982, reportedly over his frustration with the administration’s refusal to cut government spending in areas that Weidenbaum considered wasteful, including items in both the military and domestic budgets.
Weidenbaum’s “one-armed” essays include a defense of Reaganomics, as well as information on how to achieve a cleaner environment, how to fundamentally overhaul the tax and health-care systems. His examination of the impact public-sector activities can have on the performance of the national economy explores the role of government as a buyer, a seller, a provider of credit and a source of subsidy and support.
— Gerry Everding