Imagine if decisions in Washington, or at any level of government for that matter, were really made on the basis of policy.  If careful analysis could win out over politics.  Certainly the current health care debate would be very different.  But so would our discussions about economic policy.  If our discussion of the 2008 financial meltdown had been about analysis of what happened, as opposed to who's to blame, perhaps we’ve have learned a lot more from it.  

Wesleyan Professor of Economics, Richard Grossman takes a long view of  several economic crises and what we got WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them.

My conversation with Richard Grossman: