Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Samuelson (no relation to Robert) has an op-ed in the international herald tribune today advocating increased government intervention in the financial sector. People may be realizing that the brave new economy may need a manager after all. As described in Robert Reich's intriguing new book Supercapitalism, this is the economy of unlimited consumer choice and great deals and contaminated products, of a skyrocketing stock market, of low wages and eroding benefits and extreme inequality, of intense competition and the winner-take-all games and CEOs with "golden parachutes" and salaries worth a small country's GDP, and particularly, of a political process typified by corporate domination and citizen disengagement. Reich's book is better on describing this new state of affairs than, I think, explaining how it came about and what we need to do about it. Filling in these gaps are Robert Kuttner's new book, which is particularly good on what's happened to the financial sector, and Paul Krugman's book, which tells a compelling though shallow story about the conservative transformation of American politics. I'm still making my way through them, but they are all very impressive and seem like important reads.