In short, the elimination of the financial legacy of Reaganomics could force the United States to make some exceptionally difficult choices indeed.

The economic success of the Reagan Administration was largely dependent upon the pyramiding of massive debt and the siphoning of capital from the rest of the world.

Many critics see international trade as a form of cultural imperialism that must be strictly controlled.

The dreams of "leaving it up to the market" or of returning to a politically neutral gold standard cannot succeed because the nature of the monetary system has a profound impact on the interests of powerful groups and states. Affected groups and states will always try to intervene in the operation of the system to make it serve their interests.

A market is not politically neutral; its existence creates economic power which one actor can use against another.

In many societies the domestic social costs of adjustment to changing patterns of comparative advantage are believed to outweigh the advantages of further trade liberalization.

Among the many factors that make a return to halcyon days of the first decades of the postwar era virtually impossible is the decline of clearly defined political leadership.