Weidenbaum memoir offers inside look at rise of Reaganomics

For nearly a quarter century, Murray Weidenbaum has said little about what it was like to serve as the first chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, a role in which he was a primary architect of policies later known as “Reaganomics.” Now, one year after Reagan’s passing, Weidenbaum has issued a brief memoir detailing his years as the president’s chief economic adviser.

Murray Weidenbaum’s new book of essays offers defense of Reaganomics

“Give me a one-armed economist,” President Harry S. Truman once demanded as he vented his frustration over economic advisors who offer straightforward recommendations, then hedge their bets by tacking on a slew of caveats, often beginning with the phrase “but, on the other hand…” Now, Murray Weidenbaum, the chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s first Council of Economic Advisers, has published a compilation of essays that offers the clear, no-nonsense economic policy analysis that Truman craved. Titled One-Armed Economist: On the Intersection of Business and Government, the book provides a distillation of four decades of Weidenbaum’s writings on key public policy issues.