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
When You Know How Polls Work, You Realize that the…
Despite four criminal indictments with 91 felony charges, recent surveys show Donald Trump leading Joe Biden narrowly. Or by as much as 10 points. Or trailing by a point or two. Or down by five. This array of results has left many Democrats and some Republicans anxious about their candidate’s prospects. They should take a breath and get back to…Continue reading
Trade Agreements Have Created U.S. Jobs And Raised U.S. Incomes
The rising political opposition to open trade from both the left and the right is an instance, and one among many, of how today’s policy debates become decoupled from reality. On this Labor Day week, recognizing how our current trade and investment arrangements generate broad benefits for workers and consumers matters, lest the growing anti-trade faction unwittingly unravels them. A…Continue reading
Oops! Ron DeSantis’s Economic Program and Critique Make the Case…for…
Despite Donald Trump’s indictments and looming trials, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis faces virtually insurmountable challenges in his bid to defeat his party’s cult leader and win the GOP nomination. In the latest reboot of his faltering campaign, DeSantis has shifted his attention away from woke to the economy. This effort will almost certainly fail, but it’s instructive because the DeSantis…Continue reading
More Encouraging News on Inflation Means the Fed Should Pause…
The Biden administration has pulled off a remarkable two-step—at once, beating inflation while expanding employment. In both cases, policy decisions drove the results—10 interest rate increases to tame inflation; and, to bolster employment, major stimulus for the pandemic, followed by programs of large-scale infrastructure investments and tax benefits aimed at bolstering American industry in areas such as clean energy and…Continue reading
Why Don’t Americans Recognize that Inflation is Down and Incomes…
My late boss, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a sage and successful politician, once told me that in politics, “If you don’t get credit, it didn’t happen.” The White House and congressional Democrats need to relearn that lesson. In March 2022, 75 percent of Americans thought the economy was flailing despite more than a year of historic gains in GDP and…Continue reading
The Debt Ceiling, Austerity, and the Economic Challenges Haunting President…
The latest reports on real growth and personal incomes issued last week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) include equally cautionary news for the economy and President Biden's prospects in 2024. Employment, incomes, and consumer spending all remain strong despite sharply higher interest rates. But the economy is balanced on a knife’s edge because businesses have been cutting back…Continue reading
The Senate Is Even More Anti-Democratic Than You Think
Donald Trump’s efforts to dominate American democracy may seem sui generis. Certainly, no other president has dismissed the results of a national election he lost, rallied supporters to violently prevent Congress from certifying that loss and called for ignoring the Constitution to facilitate his return to power. But Americans have long struggled with the country’s foundational anti-democratic features—fighting a civil…Continue reading
What Really Happened to Silicon Valley Bank
If you thought Big Finance and its regulators learned prudence and humility from the financial crisis, the past week's events were a rude wake-up call. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has several subplots. The most obvious was its astonishingly stupid investment strategy of concentrating its assets in instruments whose market value would decline as interest rates rose. .…Continue reading