America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb

June 15, 2011

Beyond an economic warning, this is an ambitious roadmap to economic reform and recovery for America. Voluminous statistics, numerous sources, and substantive issues make the book extremely credible. Readers will find explanations of the 2008 financial crisis and proposals to improve the situation. They will also be disabused of media distortions and inconsistencies that mislead the public's economic understanding. Ferrara (President Obama's Tax Piracy)--director of the Institute for Policy Innovation, former Reagan White House Office of Policy Development member, and former associate deputy attorney general under the first President Bush--outlines the calamitous path America has traveled and proposes multiple reforms that need both liberals' and conservatives' attention to avoid detonating the bankruptcy bomb. The reforms repeatedly demonstrate how present policies hurt poor and low-income Americans; restrain economic growth; endanger health care, education, Social Security, pensions, and states; and create disincentives that cause increased welfare enrollment, crime, and counterproductive activities. A comparison with Chilean Social Security, for example, shows U.S. ineptitude. Ferrara's plea: "Can we talk?" VERDICT Enlightening for serious readers, politicians, and those concerned about America's future.--Joanne B. Conrad, Geneseo, NY

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2011
The failure of federal, state and local officials of both major parties, over many years, have primed a ticking bankruptcy bomb for America that will explode the American Dream if we do not disarm it, says policy analyst and columnist Ferrara, who holds Reaganomics as his gold standard. He offers conservative views for restoring the American Dream, including how to permanently balance the budget for the long term and the need to terminate obsolete programs, agencies, bureaucracies, and perhaps cabinet departments and then shrink the remaining government. A central theme of the book is that a truly modernized social safety net based on highly effective market incentives . . . would achieve all the liberal social safety net goals far better, at just a fraction of the cost of the current, outdated, counterproductive entitlement programs. This insightful, wide-ranging policy statement for America in the twenty-first century adds to the continuing debates on structural reforms in Washington and at state and local government levels across the country.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)