Global Investors Are Telling Donald Trump His Deficits and National…
Washington is unnerved these days about budget deficits and the national debt. Deficit angst comes along periodically, often as a pretext for cutting social spending. This time, however, there’s genuine cause for alarm. Outsized deficits are par for the course when the economy is in recession or reeling from a shock like the pandemic or the financial collapse; most of… Continue reading
The President’s Budget and the Case for Moving Beyond Austerity
The President released his FY 2014 budget today, and right off, it makes more economic sense than most of what passes for serious fiscal discussion in DC. In particular, it offers up new public investments, uses revenues and entitlement changes to restore long-term fiscal sanity, and phases in those changes down the road when the economy (hopefully) is stronger. Apart…Continue reading
Why We All Have to Worry about Cyprus
With Europe's brazen mismanagement this week of the banking collapse in Cyprus, the Euro crisis moved closer to farce and, potentially, closer to a serious problem for the rest of us. Over the past three years, as global investors have periodically fled the government bond markets of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy, Eurozone leaders have grudgingly spent $650 billion…Continue reading
How a Grand Bargain on the Deficit Could Erode Social…
Paul Ryan’s new budget blueprint released this week — details to follow, as usual — will only intensify the partisan warfare over the deficit. In truth, the deficit is just a cover story here, since the real debate is over the scope and role of government itself. Ryan at least is more upfront about it than most – he includes…Continue reading
Dark Thoughts on the Coming Sequester
This week’s bout over federal spending pits Tea Party militants, conservative pundits and most Republican office holders against the President, his congressional allies and most economists who pay attention. But behind the politics, there is simply no economic basis for the immediate spending cuts that would follow the sequester — or immediate tax increases for that matter. The economy is…Continue reading
The American Dream Is in Big Trouble
The American Dream is a precious and curious thing. According to the basic narrative, if you work hard, opportunities will present themselves – which, to be sure, usually involve working even harder. And if you do this long enough, you’ll be able to raise a family in conditions that prepare your children, like you, to work hard for the opportunities…Continue reading
The Lessons of Today’s Troubling Report on GDP
This morning's disappointing report that GDP actually declined by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of last year is a lesson in how government and serendipity can shape our economic path, especially in the short-term. The basic elements of economic prosperity are in place. To begin, Americans are spending again: Personal consumption accelerated from a 1.6 percent increase in the…Continue reading
The New Nihilism in the Debate over the Debt Ceiling
For decades, fiscal conservatives have used congressional debates over raising the debt limit to vent their frustrations with big government. But no one seriously questioned the need to do so, not until a band of Tea Party uber-conservatives in 2011 resolved to use the debt limit as a bargaining chip in budget talks. They ignored the fact that raising the…Continue reading
Modest Progress on the Deficit Is Just What the U.S.…
One argument nearly entirely absent in the debate over the fiscal cliff issues is the effect on the economy. True, some diehard conservatives warn that without drastic steps to privatize part of Social Security and much of Medicare, our national debt will soon make us pariahs in global capital markets, on the Greek model. But there was never any economic…Continue reading