American Theocracy (2006)

He identifies three broad and related trends ... none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies ... that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt ... current and prospective ... that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.

the underlying Washington strategy was less to give ordinary Americans direct sums than to create a low-interest-rate boom in real estate, thereby raising the percentage of American home ownership, ballooning the prices of homes, and allowing householders to take out some of that increase through low-cost refinancing. This triple play created new wealth to take the place of that destroyed in the 2000-2002 stock-market crash and simultaneously raised consumer confidence.

Nothing similar had ever been engineered before. Instead of a recovery orchestrated by Congress and the White House and aimed at the middle- and bottom-income segments, this one was directed by an appointed central banker, a man whose principal responsibility was to the bankingsystem. His relief, targeted on financial assets and real estate, was principally achieved by monetary stimulus. This in itself confirmed the massive realignment of preferences and priorities within the American system.

Likewise huge and indisputable but almost never discussed were the powerful political economics lurking behind the stimulus: the massive rate-cut-driven post-2000 bailout of the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) sector, with its ever-climbing share of GDP and proximity to power. No longer would Washington concentrate stimulus on wages or public-works employment. The Fed's policies, however shrewd, were not rooted in an abstraction of the national interest but in pursuit of its statutory mandate to protect the U.S. banking and payments system, now inseparable from the broadly defined financial-services sector.

Critical reception

Bad Money (2008)

• The Emerging Republican Majority (1969)
• Mediacracy: American Parties and Politics in the Communications Age (1974)
• Electoral Reform and Voter Participation (with Paul H. Blackman, 1975)
• Post-Conservative America (1982)
• Staying on Top: The Business Case for a National Industrial Strategy (1984)
• The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath (1990)
• Democrats, Republicans, and the Decline of Middle Class Prosperity (1993)
• Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street and the Frustration of American Politics (1994)
• The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America (1999)
• William McKinley (2003)* A Political History of the American Rich (2002) ISBN 0-7679-0533-4
• American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (2004) ISBN 0-670-03264-6
• American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (2006) ISBN 0-670-03486-X
• Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (2007) ISBN 0-670-01907-0