[Subscription Required] The central bank is on a one-way path to a larger role in our government and economy. Wall Street is thrilled, Main Street not so much.
(This is a draft of an oped. I got done and saw it's 1500 words, so I'm posting it for your enjoyment rather than go through a painful 600 word diet. Diet later. Maybe.)
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of about 11 percent of Amazon stock, recently became the first person in history to be worth more than $200 billion. Bezos’s net worth has skyrocketed as Amazon’s share price increased about 85 percent since February, before the pandemic.
The inability of the United States, in cooperation with like-minded nations, to implement a consistent policy toward the greater Middle East and North Africa region (spanning Morocco in the west to Iran in the east and encompassing the northern countries of Syria and Iraq to the southern countries of Sudan and Yemen) has contributed to the extent of the region’s unravelling, diminishing American influence there.
Following my last post on debt I've thought a bit more, and received some very useful emails from colleagues. A central clarifying thought emerges. The main worry I have about US debt is the possibility of a debt crisis.
Chris Pullman and Richard Reeves at Brookings write opposing a reinstatement of the deduction for state and local taxes on the federal income tax. Jonathan Parker, a great economics tweeter, tweets approvingly, I offer a little more guarded approval.
The recently released quarterly GDP growth numbers for the first quarter of FY2020-21 should alarm us all. The 23.9% contraction in India (and the numbers will probably be worse when we get estimates of the damage in the informal sector) compares with a drop of 12.4% in Italy and 9.5% in the US, two of the most Covid-affected advanced economies.
Why bother with a column about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to a San Francisco hair salon earlier this week – an appointment that caused political embarrassment for America’s highest elected Democrat as a surveillance camera caught her violating, at the time, at least two local ordinances (getting her hair done indoors and not wearing a mask)?
Vladimir Putin is a notorious risk-taker. Many of his ventures have paid off for him, but did his luck run out when a suspected plot to take out opposition leader Aleksei Navalny veered wildly off course? Instead of being pronounced dead from “natural causes” upon arriving on a flight to Moscow, as was purportedly planned, Navalny lies in a coma in a Berlin hospital, full of a poison accessible only to the Russian military and its Kremlin-successor security service, the FSB.
Election Day is Nov. 3. But if the vote is close, we might not know who wins control of the White House until December or even January. Multiple, complex scenarios could play out before either Donald Trump or Joe Biden takes the oath of office Jan. 20.
How do we prepare for a future that is unpredictable? That's the question at the heart of Margaret Heffernan's new book, Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future. Heffernan is a professor at the University of Bath, but she is also a serial entrepreneur, a former CEO, and the author of five books on leadership, innovation, and the challenge of unleashing talent and creativity in large organizations.
The director of school choice at Reason Foundation and an adjunct scholar at Cato Institute, Corey DeAngelis, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss DeAngelis’ new study which finds a correlation between receiving a school voucher in Milwaukee and a reduction in criminal activity.
In August, the unemployment rate declined by 1.8 percentage points to 8.4 percent, and the number of unemployed persons fell by 2.8 million to 13.6 million. Both measures have declined for 4 consecutive months but are higher than in February, by 4.9 percentage points and 7.8 million, respectively.
Turkey, Russia and China are just three countries taking advantage of the moment to act aggressively around the world and test American resolve. All three are betting that the United States is too mired in crisis to react powerfully to strategic challenges overseas. All three might be making a miscalculation.
Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson discusses how Joe Biden has put himself in a socialist straight jacket based on the his polices and the reality of implementing them.
Hoover Institution fellow Scott Atlas discusses the coronavirus task force and some of his concerns concerning the closure of schools and online learning.
Thank goodness that President Trump has appointed a knowledgeable, credible counterbalance to the Coronavirus Taskforce. Dr. Scott Atlas is not a bureaucrat like Dr. Anthony Fauci or Dr. Deborah Birx; he is a world-renowned scientist and physician who seems to actually study the totality of the impacts of the COVID-19 epidemic. Dr. Fauci, by contrast, has repeatedly conceded that he hasn’t considered the economic impacts and secondary public health crises of his COVID-19 advice.
Dr. Scott Atlas, the controversial newest addition to the White House Coronavirus Task Force, says he is a “straight shooter.” He proceeded to demonstrate that in a lengthy and wide-ranging interview with BBC Radio Friday.
It sounds unlikely but the most appalling instance of journalistic malpractice last week was not when The Atlantic published anonymous allegations that President Trump disparaged American troops behind closed doors—it was Joe Biden’s so-called press conference following another shaky, rambling, and dishonest speech disguised as a “campaign event.”
Upright: “I think the narrative that the police are in some epidemic of shooting unarmed black men is simply a false narrative and also the narrative that’s based on race. The fact is that it is very rare for an unarmed African American to be shot by a white police officer.” —Attorney General William Barr
Jan Hatzius, a Goldman Sachs expert that co-authored the record, said to POLITICO that U.S. financial end results because July substantiate the partnership in between wellness and also development. The economic situation’s enhancement, he kept in mind, represents an increasing allotment of the American populace based on condition and also regional hide directeds– coming from regarding 40 per-cent in June to its own existing 80 per-cent.
An elderly gent in California made a comment that sadly captures the mood in the nation’s biggest state: “In California these days, you can’t tell whether mask wearers are fighting the virus, the smoke, or the police.”
Charles Dallara, The Partners Group USA chairman, and former CEO of the Institute of International Finance, joins ‘Squawk on the Street’ to discuss if a recovery could happen without additional stimulus.
BROOKFIELD – David X. Sullivan, the Republican candidate in the Fifth Congressional District, says GOP President Donald Trump's recent payroll tax suspension has helped boost the economy.
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