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by John Tamny (Author), George Gilder (Foreword by)
When Politicians Panicked tells the tragic story of how, in response to a spreading virus, global politicians mindlessly pursued economic desperation, starvation, and death as the cure.
The global economy was booming as 2020 dawned, but within a few short months wreckage, death, and desperation borne of economic contraction were the new normal. What happened? In When Politicians Panicked, economic commentator John Tamny tells the heart-wrenching story of a time when politicians were tragically relieved of basic common sense in their response to the new coronavirus. In March of 2020, the virus quickly became a major news item as political panic about it traveled around the world. Even though anecdotal and market-based evidence from the virus's epicenter indicated very low lethality, politicians quickly imposed economy-crushing lockdowns on the rather specious assumption that unemployment, bankruptcy, and starvation would somehow halt the virus's spread. Tamny methodically dismantles the political consensus by showing how economic growth has long been the first and last answer to death and disease. He then shows how politicians, having mindlessly crushed a growing economy, proceeded to double down on their mistakes by throwing taxpayer money at their shocking errors. Throughout When Politicians Panicked, Tamny makes a relentless case that free people don't just produce the wealth that renders today's killers yesterday's news. They also produce crucial information about health threats that shine a light on that which threatens us. Lockdowns suffocate economic progress, but they also blind us to how we can progress--as Tamny makes plain in what will go down as an essential history for anyone seeking to understand the coronavirus panic of 2020.Author Biography
John Tamny is president of the Parkview Institute, editor of RealClearMarkets, a senior fellow at the Market Institute, and senior economic adviser to mutual fund firm Applied Finance Group. He frequently writes about the securities markets, along with tax, trade, and monetary policy issues that impact those markets for a variety of publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and RealClearMarkets. Tamny is the author of six books. His latest is The Money Confusion (All Seasons Press). Others are When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason (Post Hill Press), which was released in 2021, Popular Economics (Regnery, 2015), a primer on economics, Who Needs the Fed? (Encounter Books, 2016) about the central bank's onrushing economic irrelevance, The End of Work (Regnery, 2018), which discusses the exciting evolution of jobs that don't feel at all like work, along with 2019's They're Both Wrong: A Policy Guide for America's Frustrated Independent Thinkers (AIER).
