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 Good News in Today’s Jobs Report is Better than…
This morning's employment report makes the President's case that the economy is not only strengthening, but has been for some months now. The unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent; and this time, it was not because more people dropped out of the labor force. The number of discouraged workers or people "marginally attached" to the labor force actually declined. Rather,…Continue reading
Romney No Longer Has a Tax Plan
The press may not yet realize it, but last night's debate actually made a little news: Mitt Romney no longer has a tax plan. For more than a year, he has promised to cut all tax rates by 20 percent. When the President noted that the non-partisan Tax Policy Center has calculated that such rate cuts would cost $4.9 trillion…Continue reading
Mitt Romney is Just Not Ready to be President
For a candidate running for president on promises to reform taxes and entitlements, Mitt Romney provided evidence this week that he understands little about either taxes or federal transfer programs. Here is what he said: 47 percent of Americans are "dependent" on government transfers. They are the same 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes. And nothing he…Continue reading
Rewriting Economic History Against Obama
This op-ed written by Dr. Shapiro is reprinted from in the Washington Post on August 16, 2012 Two respected economic advisers to the Romney campaign launched a new line of criticism of President Obama's economic stewardship on this page this week "Obama's faulty math; his economic arguments contradict themselves," op-ed, Aug. 16]. The case offered by Kevin Hassett of the…Continue reading
The Eurozone Crisis is Back, and All of Us Are…
Once again, the Eurozone debt crisis threatens to suck the oxygen out of the global economy. Two years of austerity across most of Europe continues to produce the predicted effects: We learned this week that Europe\'s private sector keeps on contracting. Moreover, global investors began to bail again on Spain, driving interest rates on ten-year Spanish government bonds to an…Continue reading
The LIBOR Mess Could Be the Biggest Financial Fraud in…
If our financial policies were based on recent experience, the debate over government regulation versus self-regulation by Wall Street would be settled. Yet, the refrain that the big banks know best remains the default position of most American conservatives and many policymakers. This childlike faith will be tested by the new scandal swirling around some of the most basic interest…Continue reading
A New Economic Challenge Facing Europe and the United States
I spent much of last week in Geneva, Switzerland. Even in that city of global institutions, in the European country most untouched by the continents sovereign debt crisis, most conversations found their way to hand-wringing over Europes economic decline. As the Eurozone governments struggle to save their common currency, it is increasingly clear that the misguided austerity policies of many…Continue reading
How Much Credit Can Obama Claim on the Economy?
Presidents regularly get the credit or blame for developments beyond their control. Sometimes, they also get no credit or blame for the decisions they do take. Barack Obama fits both molds. A fresh example of the second pattern is the Presidents surprising semi-breakthrough on European debt, at this weeks G20 meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico. For months, President Obama and…Continue reading