Crisis and Opportunity: How the Bailouts and the New New Deal Pierce the Big Myth and Put Tradition and Free Markets Back on the Same Side

I gave this talk at the Heritage Foundation on the opportunity the bailouts provide: restoking "fusionism," or the kinship between small-town, agrarian conservatism steeped in tradition on the one hand, and free markets on the other hand.

In short, big government, not free markets, yield Britney Spears and Wal-Mart. Please watch my talk. I begin at about 12 minutes.
The event was sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute through its Culture of Enterprise initiative.

Alternatively, you can save the mp3 by clicking here, and then put it on your iPhone or whatever.

Interview with The University Bookman

The Russell Kirk Center publishes a quarterly literary journal called The University Bookman. Their editors interview me this month about my 2006 book The Big Ripoff, which last month won the Templeton Enterprise Award.

You can read the Bookman interview, "Behind the Big Ripoff" here.

A highlight:

University Bookman: Conservatives often speak of “capitalism” or “the free market”; have conservatives bought into the illusion that big business means capitalism is working?

Tim Carney: Many have. It’s an easy illusion to fall for. We know Ralph Nader hates GM, and we know Ralph Nader is a socialist. So it’s easy to assume defending GM is the same as defending the free market.

But, as I discuss in The Big Ripoff, “capitalism” has two meanings. First, it can be a synonym for the free market. But in other contexts it describes a sort of economy in which there is much debt and well-ordered capital markets with much investing. Alexander Hamilton knew these two—free markets and robust stock markets—might be at odds. He favored stock markets over free markets. He won.

Heckonomics: Bankruptcy

Ever wonder just what "bankruptcy" entails, how bankrupt companies continue to exist, and what it would mean if GM went bankrupt?

I explain it all at Culture11 today, in my Heckonomics column, "Bankrupt! What the heck is bankruptcy, and should GM get it."