Jim Powell is Senior Fellow at a libertarian

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, the

Cato Institute The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Ind ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, with which he has been associated since 1988. He has also done work for the

Manhattan Institute The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (renamed in 1981 from the International Center for Economic Policy Studies) is a conservative American think tank focused on domestic policy and urban affairs, established in Manhattan in 1978 by Anto ...

, the

Institute for Humane Studies The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) is a non-profit organization that promotes the teaching and research of classical liberalism in higher education in the United States. IHS offers funding opportunities, programs, and events for faculty and g ...

Citizens for a Sound Economy Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) (1984–2004) was a conservative political group operating in the United States. It was established in 1984 by Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries. Ron Paul was appointed as the first chairman of the ...

, the

National Right to Work Committee National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

and Americans for Free Choice in Medicine. Powell is an author on the history of liberty. He wrote three books that reported findings about the

unintended consequence In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by Ameri ...

s of major presidential policies. Altogether he has written eight books and is perhaps best known for ''FDR's Folly'', which has been praised by Nobel Laureates

Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the ...

and

James M. Buchanan James McGill Buchanan Jr. (; October 3, 1919 – January 9, 2013) was an American economist known for his work on public choice theory originally outlined in his most famous work co-authored with Gordon Tullock in 1962, ''The Calculus of Consen ...

, Harvard historian

David Landes David Saul Landes (April 29, 1924 – August 17, 2013) was a professor of economics and of history at Harvard University. He is the author of ''Bankers and Pashas'', '' Revolution in Time'', '' The Unbound Prometheus'', '' The Wealth and Poverty ...

and historian Thomas Fleming.Cato Institute Resume for Powell
/ref> Powell's books have been translated into

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

. He has contributed several hundred articles for an unusually broad array of publications. He has given talks internationally as well as at Harvard, Stanford and other universities across the United States.

Biography

Powell was born in Norfolk, Virginia and grew up on Long Island. His father, Frank Coburn Powell, was a partner in a company that principally manufactured high quality phonograph turntables and cartridges. His mother, Madeline Shields Powell, was a catalog librarian. Both were from Indianapolis. Powell graduated from East Woods School (

Oyster Bay, New York The Town of Oyster Bay is the easternmost of the three towns which make up Nassau County, New York, United States. Part of the New York metropolitan area, it is the only town in Nassau County to extend from the North Shore to the South Shore ...

) and Millbrook School (

Millbrook, New York Millbrook is a village in Dutchess County, New York, United States. Millbrook is located in the Hudson Valley, on the east side of the Hudson River, north of New York City. Millbrook is near the center of the town of Washington, of which it is a ...

) before entering the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

where he earned a B.A. in history. His professors included William H. McNeill (''The Rise of the West''), Donald F. Lach (Asia ''in the Making of Europe'') and Earl J. Hamilton (''War and Prices in Spain''). As an editor of the student quarterly ''New Individualist Review'', Powell helped publish articles by future Nobel Laureates

F.A. Hayek Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, Jurisprudence, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical lib ...

and

George J. Stigler George Joseph Stigler (; January 17, 1911 – December 1, 1991) was an American economist. He was the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is considered a key leader of the Chicago school of economics. Early life and e ...

. Other contributors included

Ludwig von Mises Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (; 29 September 1881 – 10 October 1973) was an Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and Sociology, sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the societal contributions of classical liberali ...

Murray Rothbard Murray Newton Rothbard (; March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian ...

and Yale Brozen. Powell worked as a researcher for future Nobel Laureate

Ronald H. Coase Ronald Harry Coase (; 29 December 1910 – 2 September 2013) was a British economist and author. Coase received a bachelor of commerce degree (1932) and a PhD from the London School of Economics, where he was a member of the faculty until 1951. ...

. Powell started his career as a direct response advertising copywriter, doing the bulk of his work for financial services companies like J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch and

GE Capital GE Capital is the financial services division of General Electric. The company currently only runs one division, GE Energy Financial Services. It had provided additional services in the past; however, those units were sold between 2013 and 2018. ...

. In 1976, he began freelancing for ''Barron's'', then for other business publications, then publications in the art market and general-interest magazines. Writing for travel magazines took him to Argentina, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, Belgium, Switzerland and Dubai. Powell is a frequent contributor to Forbes Online. Among topics covered: * How dictators come to power in a democracy * Rich nations that went broke by spending too much * How our friend Iran became our enemy * The most important secret of a prosperous economy * Why politicians lose so much money trying to pick winners * How bad economies recover fast when governments get out of the way * Two of the all-time greatest successes in cutting taxes and spending * Why wars often go wrong * Global oil and gas markets, our best energy security * Why soak-the-rich taxes end up soaking everyone * How entrepreneurs created the great boom that made modern Japan * An amazing command of the obvious * Why there's no human progress without capitalism Powell's early books were about the art market, commercial real estate and Japanese finance. By the late 1980s, Powell began to author books on liberty.

Books

* ''The Fight For Liberty, Critical Lessons From Liberty's Greatest Champions Of The Last 2,000 Years'' (2012) * ''Greatest Emancipations, How the West Abolished Slavery'' (2008) * ''Bully Boy: The Truth about Theodore Roosevelt's Legacy'' (2006) * ''Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II'' (2005) * ''FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression'' (2003) * ''The Triumph of Liberty: A 2,000-Year History Told through the Lives of Freedom's Greatest Champions'' (2000) * ''Gnomes of Tokyo'' (1988) * ''Risk, Ruin and Riches: Inside the World of Big-Time Real Estate'' (1986) * ''An Investor's Guide to Under-Valued Art and Antiques'' (1983)

References

External links

About Jim Powell

Cato Institute Biography
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Powell, Jim Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Chicago alumni 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers American libertarians Libertarian historians American political writers American male non-fiction writers Cato Institute people