The Economist: “Leviathan stirs again”

The Economist: “Today big government is back with a vengeance: not just as a brute fact, but as a vigorous ideology. Britain’s public spending is set to exceed 50% of GDP (see chart 1). America’s financial capital has shifted from New York to Washington, DC, and the government has been trying to extend its control over the health-care industry. Huge state-run companies such as Gazprom and PetroChina are on the march. Nicolas Sarkozy, having run for office as a French Margaret Thatcher, now argues that the main feature of the credit crisis is ‘the return of the state, the end of the ideology of public powerlessness.’”

Also in The Economist: The size and power of the state is growing, and discontent is on the rise