In the 25 years before the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the United States experienced two brief, mild recessions and two strong, long expansions. Globally, incomes grew briskly; inflation abated; and stock markets boomed.This time, however, the return to growth has been much more difficult.
Hillary Clinton will probably survive her latest ethical disaster. James Carville is back again to pronounce the Clinton Foundation scandal as “diddly-squat.” He may be right in the political sense.
by Charles Blahousvia e21, Economic Policies for the 21st Century
Monday, April 27, 2015
The urgent financing crisis facing Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) is giving rise to suggestions that the DI Trust Fund be merged with Social Security’s larger Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund. These two components of Social Security have been kept separate thus far since their inceptions. The following factors should be borne in mind if any such policy change is considered.
A vast amount of contemporary education policy attention and education reform energy has been lavished on the task of defining and gauging “college readiness” and then taking steps to align K–12 outcomes more closely with it. The ultimate goal is for many more young people to complete high school having been properly prepared for “college-level” work.
On Friday, the American Economic Association announced that it was awarding the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal to Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer, Jr. Defenders of the drug war should answer this question: Are you glad that Roland Fryer didn't go to prison for a long time for dealing drugs? Do you think he should have?
Despite the new openness, the word “offensive” only appears twice in the document. One must read the document carefully to find the times where the phrase “cyber operations” is used where the phrase “offensive cyber operations” should have been used.
The data could not be more clear: The chances are vanishingly slim that kids born into fragile families headed by young, poorly educated, low-income adults are going to be able to close the gap with kids born into stable, two-parent families headed by professionals in their thirties and forties.
Convicted war criminal Omar Khadr, the Canadian transferred to an Alberta facility after serving time at Guantanamo Bay, has been granted bail. Shortly after the decision was announced, the federal government said it would appeal the decision made by an Alberta judge.
To combat discrimination against women, Bergmann would have the government step up its enforcement of the affirmative action regulations. A hard-liner on this issue, Bergmann proposes: "Each branch of each large firm should have an EEOC audit officer attached to its case, just as it has an IRS agent looking at its tax compliance."
The secrecy surrounding the National Security Agency’s post-9/11 warrantless surveillance and bulk data collection program hampered its effectiveness, and many members of the intelligence community later struggled to identify any specific terrorist attacks it thwarted, a newly declassified document shows.
Hoover fellow Victor Davis Hanson discusses the issues surrounding Hillary Clinton and the other presidential candidates, and the need for new leaders who are unafraid of the media and will do what is right.
Hoover fellow Kiron Skinner discusses the US drone strike that targeted a suspected al Qaeda compound in Pakistan and killed two western hostages. Skinner also comments on the latest headlines related to Iran, Putin’s aggression in Eastern Europe, and the Islamic State in the Middle East.
Leonard Wong of the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about honesty in the military. Based on a recent co-authored paper, Wong argues that the paperwork and training burden on U.S. military officers requires dishonesty--it is simply impossible to comply with all the requirements.
McFaul said he believed the impasse was playing right into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he said wanted the conflict to rage on as a means of keeping pressure on Kiev, with an eye to precipitating an economic collapse.
Developing countries have much to learn from Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore who transformed the republic from a third world economy to one of the most advanced countries in one generation. The lessons for countries aspiring to learn from the Singapore development model are clear – strengthen institutions and improve governance.
Bert Patenaude, a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a lecturer in history and international relations at the university, echoes that view. In an email to Newsweek, he wrote that “Armenia 100 years ago was a clear case of genocide, as the academic community agrees. It easily fits the legal definition of the Genocide Convention.”
Former California Republican Party chairman Tom Del Beccaro announced his candidacy Sunday for California's open U.S. Senate seat. Del Beccaro, 53, of Lafayette, is the second prominent Republican to enter the 2016 race to succeed U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. The first was Assemblyman Rocky Chávez, R-Oceanside, in early March.
“This is going to be great for his business,” said Tim Kane, an economist at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “It will reduce turnover, increase morale and help him build an even greater company,” he said. “But if everybody did it, it wouldn’t have the consequences.”
