James Galbraith's THE PREDATOR STATE in USA Today

'Predator' Urges Change in Definition of 'Free Market'
Steve Weinberg
USA Today, September 8, 2008

James Galbraith used to work inside Congress, as executive director of the Joint Economic Committee. Then he settled in as a professor at the University of Texas.

Like his renowned father, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, James is an iconoclast. In previous books, polemics for national magazines and research studies for academic journals, he questions the central tenets of economic policy and the underpinnings of waging imperialistic wars on behalf of capitalism and democracy.

In a book published two years ago, Galbraith showed what he considered the intellectual dishonesty of Republican Party — and supposedly, "conservative" — economic policy. That book, Unbearable Cost: Bush, Greenspan and the Economics of Empire, sought to demonstrate the devotion of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and then-Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan to helping the wealthy (including themselves) at the expense of equity (or at least a semblance of fairness) in American society.

Galbraith's new book, The Predator State, takes plenty of well-aimed, well-deserved shots at Republicans and conservatives, Democrats and liberals. Mostly, though, as the subtitle suggests, it is a denuding of an idea — the idea of how vital "free markets" are to a capitalistic, democratic nation.

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