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Surveying the wreckage from Wall Street’s collision with emergency services

Sen. J.D. Vance and Oren Cass discuss what has gone wrong with investment in the American economy and how conservatives should think about labor unions today.

Oren Cass responds to the Cato Institute’s Norbert Michel misguided critique of American Compass’s financialization research.

Ban stock buybacks and repeal business interest deductibility

The market failure is that market actors are fallible and their efforts at pursuing their own interests do not necessarily lead smoothly to efficient outcomes that serve themselves or the common good.

On this episode, Oren Cass and Chris Griswold discuss the need for transparent reporting requirements for public pension funds.

Require transparency in management of public money

Oren Cass is joined by private equity expert Steven Kaplan to discuss leveraged buyouts, bankruptcy, and the effects on workers.

On this episode of Policy in Brief, Oren and Chris take a look at the damage done to workers and local communities when businesses go bankrupt and propose reforms to better align risk and reword.

Put workers ahead of Wall Street
when firms go bankrupt

“Bad competitiveness” results in weakening demand, which either reduces global production or requires surging debt to maintain demand and production at its existing level. Perhaps that rings a bell, because it is the world we live in.

Free international trade is not a vital tenet of liberty in the American tradition; it was adopted, in Burtka’s words, “for the worst reasons and delivered the worst results.”

America grew wealthy not from free trade, but behind some of the world’s most imposing protectionist barriers. In fact, the principal tradition of free trade one finds in American history was born in the Confederate South.

Farah Stockman’s new book, American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears, documents the closure and relocation of an Indianapolis Rexnord bearing plant to Mexico and Texas. Stockman, a New York Times reporter, was assigned to cover the Rexnord plant after then-candidate Trump tweeted about its pending closure and the scheduled relocation of a nearby Carrier plant to Mexico in 2016.

Sen. Rubio assesses how the flawed bipartisan economic consensus went so tragically wrong and offers a clear-eyed approach to economic policy that can serve the national interest and the common good.

In this week’s Compass Point, Marginal Prophets, Matthew Walther turns his perceptive gaze to the “magical thinking” of neoliberalism, and brings along a delightful guide: 19th-century anthropologist James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough and keen observer of humanity’s superstitious traditions and priestly castes.

Magical thinking is evident in Homo oeconomicus’s serial recital of the “benefits of trade”; his blithe attitude toward financialization and the rise of cheap digital consumer technology; his utter indifference to the economic pressures bearing down upon the working family…

Only the Rich Can Play is an uncomfortable reminder that no matter how much you may appreciate an idea’s intellectual lineage or conceptual clarity, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. It deserves inclusion on political science syllabi as a case study in how a billionaire’s idea can flow from a Davos brainstorming session to Washington’s halls of power and become the law of the land.

Lind’s essay marks the launch of a new series, The Compass Point, that will present in-depth commentary from leading scholars and writers on topics vital to the future of conservatism. Expect them most Fridays over the next couple of months.