The Orange Path

Ed Phelps

The Economist, Oct 14th 2007

The stable trade-off depicted by the Phillips curve is thus a dangerous mirage. The economy will recover its equilibrium only when workers' expectations are fulfilled, prices turn out as anticipated, and they no longer sell their labour under false pretences. But equilibrium does not, sadly, imply full employment. Mr Phelps argued that inflation will not settle until unemployment rises to its “natural rate”, leaving some workers mouldering on the shelf.

Sandy Weill and Citigroup

Sandy Weill, "Big man's shoes". Oct 12th 2006, The Economist

Mr Weill's description of Citigroup's birth reveals a man desperate to be revered as the architect of an industry-changing merger. When the media flooded into the press conference and cameras started flashing, he recalls, he felt like a rock star.

Trusting the teacher in the grey-flannel suit

Special Report on Peter Drucker, The Economist, Nov 19th 2005

Along the way, he became increasingly convinced that the best hope for saving civilisation from barbarism lay in the humdrum science of management. He was too sensitive to the thinness of the crust of civilisation to share the classic liberal faith in the market, but too clear-sighted to embrace the growing fashion for big-government solutions. The man in the grey-flannel suit held out more hope for mankind than either the hidden hand or the gentleman in Whitehall.

Toward a Unified Theory of Black America

by Steven Dubner, New York Times, March 20th 2005

''I basically want to figure out where blacks went wrong. One could rattle off all the statistics about blacks not doing so well. You can look at the black-white differential in out-of-wedlock births or infant mortality or life expectancy. Blacks are the worst-performing ethnic group on SAT's. Blacks earn less than whites. They are still just not doing well, period.''

The Strategist: Life and Times of Thomas Schelling

Robert Didge's The Strategist: The Life and Times of Thomas Schelling