John Berlau

Who is John Berlau?

John Berlau is an American economist who currently lives in Washington, D.C. and is the director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank.

Berlau has degrees in journalism and economics from the University of Missouri. Early in his career he was a policy analyst for Consumer Alert, a position he held until 1996. He has written for Investor's Business Daily and Insight on the News, and his work has also appeared in Barron's Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Review and Policy Review. Berlau is also a regular contributor to Newsmax, where he writes a column titled "Economic View." He won the National Press Club's Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism in 2002.

Berlau is known for strong criticism of parts of the U.S. government, such as the Internal Revenue Service.

Berlau's book, Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health, was published in 2006 by Thomas Nelson. In the book, which is highly critical of the environmentalist movement, Berlau writes:

"America ... is still mighty prosperous, but environmentalism is putting us on the brink of danger as well. As technology after technology that our grandparents put in place is being banned, and new technologies never even come to market, we risk a public-health disaster. Environmentalists have promoted all sorts of doomsday scenarios about population explosions and massive cancer crises from pesticides that have been shown to be false. But now, because we have done away with so many useful products based on those scares, we are in danger of an old-fashion doomsday returning, because we've lost what protected us from the wrath of nature. Indeed, as we will see throughout this book, public health hazards caused by environmental policies are already on the scene."