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View of a Boston Street, circa 1778.

Commissary Notes and the Dark History of Revolutionary Financing

From the outset of the American Revolution, a lingering problem that plagued the minds of the Continental Congress dealt with its financing.
1916 advertisement for De Angelis Brand Superior Quality Macaroni Products.

When Socialists Put an End to Pasta Inflation

The history of food inflation during World War I, and the riots that halted it, show how capitalists take advantage of consumer expectations to price gouge.
Detail of a five-shilling Massachusetts Colony note, the only surviving piece of the colony’s 1690 legal tender.

‘Easy Money’ Review: The Currency and the Commonwealth

Saddled with debt and forbidden by the crown to mint money, Boston’s Puritans dreamed up a novel monetary system that we still use today.

At the Altar of the Fed

Celebrating the Federal Reserve as a cockpit for economic steering conceals the reality of where power lies today.
Painting of soldiers on the front.

How They Paid for the War

In World War II, the US had a planned economy. Its principles were similar to MMT.
Picture of a gas pump.
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High Transportation Costs Limit Mobility, Fueling Inequality

The absence of robust transportation infrastructure hurts us — and not only at the gas pump.
Turbulent drawing evoking mass strikes, urban decay, gas shortages, police in riot gear, chainsaw massacre, and disco.

We’re Haunted by the Economy of the 1970s

Politicians across the political spectrum warn of a return to the decade of stagflation, urban decay, and labor mutiny; but their solution misses the mark.
Picture of President Joe Biden, left, and President Jimmy Carter, right.

What Historians Think of Joe Biden-Jimmy Carter Comparisons

Historical experts and former Carter advisers fact-check the critics who have compared Joe Biden to Jimmy Carter.
Stock traders watching Jerome Powell in conference on screens in the New York Stock Exchange.
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Seeing Americans as Consumers Threatens the Fairness of Our Economy

The Federal Reserve keeps increasing interest rates to try to bring prices down — but that may erase gains by non-White workers.
FDR signing a bill into law.

On Economics And Democracy

High unemployment is extremely dangerous.
A line of cars waiting their turn at a filling station in Portland, Oregon, 1973.

The Price of Oil

The history of control and decontrol in the oil market.
The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building under construction.

“Supreme Court of Finance:” Democratic Legitimacy and the Development of the Federal Reserve System

What degree of legitimacy by voters does a public institution need in a democracy, and how much independence do experts in such an institution need to do their job?
A picture of George Aumoithe in a hallway of concrete walls.

Learning From Decades of Public Health Failure

A historian of global health explains how the lack of ICU beds in low-income communities is the result of government spending cuts dating back to the 1970s.
Reprint from the September 1966 issue of AFL-CIO American Federationist, Box 38, Folder 4, William Page Keeton Papers, Special Collections, Tarlton Law Library, The University of Texas at Austin.

Controlled Prices

Before the rise of macroeconomics that accompanied World War II, price determination was a central problem of economic thought.
Marine, eighteenth century. Smithsonian American Art Museum, bequest of Mabel Johnson Langhorne.

Quality Insurance Purposes

Insuring against the cost of insurance itself in Revolutionary-era America.
Cover page of the August 1957 issue of Nation's Business, featuring a clamp tightening in on dollar signs.

Preferred Shares

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said America faces an economic crisis fifty years in the making. But how can we name the long crisis, much less explain it?
Robert Mundell receives the Nobel Prize in economics from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, in 1999.

Remembering the Father of Supply-Side Economics

Robert Mundell’s theories spawned decades of economic debate and still matter to the big ideas of today.
A political cartoon of the panic, depicting mobs, drunkards, and class struggles.

Panic of 1837

The panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that triggered a multi-year economic depression.

The American Revolution’s Starving, Barefoot, Heroic Troops

Our young nation was very poor, the war was very expensive, and Congress and the states wanted everyone else to pay.

Full Employment and Freedom

The fight for a full employment bill forty years ago offers lessons for supporters of a job guarantee today.

A Brief History of American Health Reform

In order to win universal health care, we have to understand what — and who — we're up against.

The Democrats Are Eisenhower Republicans

For decades, Democrats have positioned themselves as fiscally responsible while Republicans happily hand tax cuts to the rich.
The words "the world you were born in no longer exists" covering Trump's eyes.

The Present Crisis and the End of the Long '90s

On the constitutional settlement that governed America from the end of the Volcker Shock in 1982 to the re-election of Donald Trump in 2024.
Robert Moses sitting in front of a catelog of blueprints.

The Inadequacy of the Abundance Agenda

Three new books propose market solutions to problems that require government intervention. We’ve been here before. It didn’t end well.
Floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Regime Change in the West?

Where amid this turmoil does neoliberalism stand? In emergency conditions it has been forced to take measures.
Elon Musk, David Stockman, and a federal building.

The Education of Elon Musk

The Reagan administration offers a cautionary tale about cost-cutting zeal crashing up against the reality of how government works.
William McKinley making a campaign speech in 1896.

Why Trump Admires President McKinley, the Original ‘Tariff Man’

President Donald Trump says McKinley made the United States prosperous through tariffs. Historians say that’s an incomplete understanding of the 25th president.
Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Jimmy Carter Was No Friend of Union Workers Like Me

As a worker in the 1970s, I looked forward to a Jimmy Carter administration. By the end of his term in office, I felt betrayed.
George HW Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon at the Reagan Library opening.
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Jimmy Carter Was a Successful (Conservative) President

Common conceptions of Carter are all wrong because they don’t acknowledge a crucial reality: he was a conservative.

"It's the Economy, Stupid" is Never Just About the Economy

Can the Clinton campaign slogan chart a path forward for Democrats? Its history tells another story.

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