Novel

Spitzer’s New Column

Will write twice a month for Slate.

Since he's become the punch line of hooker jokes, it's easy to forget that Eliot Spitzer was once the bane of Wall Street and his expertise might be handy right now. Relegated to the sidelines, the former New York governor has launched a new twice-monthly column for Slate. According to Spitzer, "we are simply rebuilding the same edifice that just collapsed": The trade and federal deficits "leave us at the mercy of foreign-capital inflows that may diminish"; a household savings rate close to zero has not permitted "long-term capital accumulation required for the investments we need"; middle-class income are stagnant; and our intellectual advantage might become a "third deficit" as China churns out engineers. Our responses to the financial crisis should not simply rescue existing companies, but create "a structure for more contained and competitive ones." The best policy, he writes, "is to return to an era of vibrant competition among multiple, smaller entities—none so essential to the entire structure that it is indispensable."