Hoover Institution - Hoover Digest - Hoover Digest 1999 No. 4

Inflated Expectations for the Fed*
Hoover fellow Michael J. Boskin believes the public asks too much of the Fed, expecting Alan Greenspan to keep the good times rolling on his own. Here Boskin explains why responsibility for sound economic policy still lies overwhelmingly with Congress and the president—and details what they must do to keep our economy growing.

Why America Is Working
Visiting America in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville encountered a nation that, although rude and in some ways backward, was nevertheless egalitarian, individualistic, decentralized, religious, property loving—and lightly governed. One hundred and sixty years later, Tocqueville’s rude, backward democracy has become the model for all the world. By Hoover media fellow Michael Barone.

Capitalist Culture
Capitalism may make us all rich, but what does it do for our cultural life? According to Hoover fellow David R. Henderson, quite a lot.

Capitalism and Its Discontents
Socialism and central planning do not work. Capitalism and free markets do. Hoover fellow Michael J. Boskin on the outcome of one of the most important debates of the century.

Taxes

Give It Back
Washington has pronounced the era of big government dead. So why do we still find ourselves saddled with a tax system more worthy of socialist Europe than the land of the free? By Hoover media fellow Amity Shlaes.

Social Security

What Trust Fund?
Hoover fellow Thomas Sowell exposes the accounting sleight-of-hand known as the Social Security trust fund.

Health Care

Save Some of the Surplus for Medical Research
Hoover fellow and Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker seldom calls for increased government spending. But he has found a worthy cause: basic medical research.

Race

When Discrimination Makes Sense
Police have been known to stop suspects because of their race, and cabdrivers have been known to refuse riders for the same reason. According to Hoover media fellow Dinesh D’Souza, we should outlaw the one but permit the other.

Crime

How to Police the Police
Do aggressive police tactics reduce crime in our largest cities? Despite what you may have heard, Hoover fellow Joseph D. McNamara argues, they don’t. An urban myth exposed.

International Institution

How to Replace the IMF
The International Monetary Fund’s cumbersome, bureaucratic decision-making process may have been suited to the financial markets of 1944, the year the IMF was created, but in the financial markets of 1999 the IMF looks like a dinosaur. Hoover fellow Lawrence J. McQuillan offers a proposal to deal with the IMF by making it . . . extinct.

The International Monetary Folly
Despite its instability, Russia shows no signs of adopting prudent economic policies. Yet the IMF recently agreed to lend the country another huge sum of money. Hoover fellows Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, and Hilton L. Root on a gigantic act of folly.

My Luncheon with Bono
It’s not every day that a professor of economics gets invited to dine with a rock star. Hoover fellow Robert J. Barro on meeting a superstar who proved pleasant, well meaning—and surprisingly well versed in economics.

Democracy

The Global Prospect
At the dawn of the new millennium, Hoover fellow Larry Diamond reviews the global prospects for democracy.

And Now the Bad News
Democracy may be, as Churchill put it, “the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” But the process of becoming a democracy is fraught with more danger than is usually acknowledged. By Hoover visiting fellow Edward D. Mansfield.

Intelligence

Stealing Secrets, Then and Now
In the wake of reports of Chinese nuclear espionage, Hoover fellow Edward Teller draws on his own experience to argue that there is one sure way to protect American technology from foreign spies: develop new technology.

Defense

Preventive Defense
The post–Cold War era is in many ways proving more dangerous and unpredictable than the era of the Cold War itself. Hoover fellow and former secretary of defense William J. Perry and Ashton B. Carter offer a defense strategy for the scary new world.

Missile Deception
U.S. intelligence learned as long ago as 1995 that China was selling nuclear technology to Pakistan—yet Washington did nothing. Hoover media fellow Bill Gertz explains how corporate interests waylaid the national interest.

Europe

The Euro and That Sinking Feeling*
Hoover fellow Melvyn Krauss explains why the euro is faring so poorly in its first year—and why its future looks, if anything, worse.

Russia

Kosovo Joyride*
Russian foreign policy has become as erratic and unpredictable as the nation’s notoriously capricious leader—witness the Russian army’s ridiculous dash into Kosovo ahead of NATO troops last spring. As long as Boris Yeltsin remains in power, Hoover fellow Michael McFaul argues, Russia will continue to make a diplomatic spectacle of itself.

The Wild, Wild East
Any nation that wants a democratic government and a free market economy must have leaders who respect the rule of law. Alas for Russia, Boris Yeltsin doesn’t. By Hoover fellow John B. Dunlop.

Asia

Asia Gets Back on Its Feet
Just two years after the economic crisis laid them low, the economies of Asia are back up and dusting themselves off. By Hoover fellow Charles Wolf Jr.

China

The Next Great Leap
The Western media tell us that China’s leaders haven’t changed much in the past twenty years, and they may well be right. What has changed is the China around them. By Hoover media fellow William McGurn.

Korea

The Rough Road to Democracy
South Korea has been rocked during the past two years by both government corruption scandals and the nation’s worst economic crisis in half a century. Can South Korea remain a functioning democracy? Hoover fellow Larry Diamond and Doh Chull Shin offer their assessment.

Latin America

Flying Down to Rio
Recently Hoover fellow Robert J. Barro traveled to Brazil to assess the country’s economic policies. He was not impressed.

Interview

The Future of Foreign Policy
Hoover fellow Condoleezza Rice serves as the chief foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush. Recently she sat down with Haim Zaltzman to explain the way she sees the world.

The Cold War

The Cold War over CNN’s Cold War
Earlier this year, CNN broadcast a twenty-four-hour television documentary on the Cold War, supplementing the documentary by publishing a companion book. The series created a furor. Critics charged that the series was inaccurate and—to use a phrase from the Cold War itself—soft on communism.

Herewith a debate among three historians. Richard Pipes explains what the television documentary got wrong. Hoover fellow Robert Conquest takes apart the companion book. Then John Lewis Gaddis, who served as an adviser to CNN, explains what CNN got right.

Reagan’s Plan
Albeit slowly and grudgingly, historians of the Cold War are finally beginning to acknowledge that one of the reasons our side finally triumphed was that we had . . . Ronald Reagan. By Hoover fellow Kiron Skinner.

A Clarion Call for Freedom
Historian Douglas Brinkley on the speech he considers “the most patriotic delivered by an American president in this century”—the Berlin Wall address delivered in June 1987 by Hoover honorary fellow Ronald Reagan (and composed by Hoover fellow Peter Robinson).

Save This Date
Reflecting on the tenth anniversary of “the most important historical event of our lifetime,” Hoover fellow Arnold Beichman explains why we should forever commemorate November 9, 1989.

History and Culture

The Day Cornell Died
As gun-wielding black students seized control of a campus building in April 1969, Cornell University descended into anarchy. An account thirty years later by Hoover fellow Thomas Sowell, who was teaching at Cornell at the time.