The Hoover Institution’s Task Force on Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity’s first joint publication appeared online on April 27; the print edition will be released in May 2009. In this nine–chapter volume, the contributors to Reacting to the Spending Spree: Policy Changes We Can Afford examine the challenges the Obama administration faces today, and in the foreseeable future, and the administration’s planned responses.
The administration’s tasks are daunting and numerous. The book explores how it will spend the funds allocated and the announced policies the administration is undertaking in just a few of the many areas of concern: taxes, labor, health care, patent law, environment, infrastructure, banking, and finance. President Obama has said repeatedly that solving the country’s economic problems is his highest priority: getting people back to work, stabilizing financial markets, freeing up frozen credit markets, and, in general, building back confidence in the U.S. economy. But he acknowledges that economics is not the only problem to be solved.
As the Obama administration approaches its hundredth day, this volume analyzes whether it can adequately deal with the overwhelming set of problems, even though vast amounts of government money are being spent. With the protection of individual property rights as the common thread of the nine chapters, the task force is well equipped to evaluate the administration’s initial response.
Task Force on Property Rights members Terry Anderson, Charles Calomiris, Richard Epstein, Stephen Haber, James Huffman, Gary Libecap, Scott Kieff, and Henry Smith contributed to this volume, as did Nobel laureate Jagdish Bhagwati and Kevin Hassett.
