Free Republic

More than five years after the onset of the financial crisis, you might have thought economic policy makers would know what to do next. Well they don't. Or at the very least, there is nothing like the kind of consensus that prevailed before the financial crisis. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been hosting a conference on rethinking economic policy, organised by four experts in the area, including the IMF's own chief economist. One of the other organisers - the Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof of the University of California - had a vivid analogy for the state of uncertainty...

Mr. Meltzer played a leading role in the administration’s efforts to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and related policies affecting terrorism detainees. He was also the White House’s main contact with the Justice Department’s powerful Office of Legal Counsel, which evaluates whether proposed policies would be lawful.

The Successor to Greenspan Has a Very Tough Act to Follow WHEN Alan Greenspan finally retires from the Federal Reserve, will he leave behind any of his DNA? Now in his 18th remarkable year as Fed chairman, the owlish and idiosyncratic Mr. Greenspan is required by law to step down in January 2006. Nominating a successor could be President Bush's biggest economic decision next year, given Mr. Greenspan's mythic reputation as the guardian of price stability and economic growth. A big uncertainty is how any successor will extend Mr. Greenspan's approach to monetary policy, which has been as much an...