Detroit Bailout Boondoggle

In his Sept. 2008 NYT Op-Ed "The Establishment Lives!", David Brooks heralded the arrival of an American era of Progressive Corporatism, in which government "acts to create a stable - and often oligarchic - framework for capitalist endeavor" by effectively choosing market winners and losers. Progressive Corporatism is a term coined by economist Arnold Kling. Today, in his NYT Op-Ed "Bailout to Nowhere", Brooks argued that a financial bailout of U.S. automakers could greatly weaken the forces of creative destruction that power free-market capitalism, signaling that Progressive Corporatism could be here to stay.