Amity Shlaes is a senior columnist on political economy at the Financial Times. She writes twice weekly for the paper and its website from New York. Shlaes formerly served as a member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, where she wrote on economics, schools, and other things. Shlaes appears as a commentator on National Public Radio and has been published in the New Republic, National Review, and Foreign Affairs. Her national bestselling book The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy and What to Do About It was published in 1999 by Random House. Her first book, Germany: The Empire Within (Farrar, Straus; Cape) looked at German national identity at the end of communism.

Photo: Mike Minehan