Last week my interest was aroused by an article written by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times (November 18th) in which he discusses a recent book by Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan. In the article he provides a number of reasons why we might expect higher – possibly much higher – inflation in the coming years. And an article in today’s Wall Street Journal by David Harrison similarly suggests that, following successful introduction of a Covid-19 vaccine, widespread and pent-up …
Debt, More Debt, and Yes, Even More Debt
November 22, 2020In August of this year, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Hamid Rashid warned that a global debt crisis was looming. And just last week, Zambia became the sixth country this year – after Argentina, Belize, Ecuador, Lebanon, and Suriname – to default on its sovereign debt when President Edgar Lungu’s government failed to make a $42.5 million interest payment that was due. Under normal circumstances one sovereign default is newsworthy; the latest announcement merely underscores what a strange year it has …
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership: Why It Should Matter to Us
November 18, 2020Just two days ago, 15 Asia-Pacific nations agreed to what is arguably the most important trade deal in history. Known as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), it will unite the 10 countries from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam – with Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea to create the largest trade bloc in the world. With its members accounting for about one-third …
The Lender of Last Resort
November 11, 2020There is a high stakes political fight looming over whether to extend the emergency loan programs put in place this past Spring by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department, in response to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. While it appears that the Fed might be amenable to continuing the lending programs beyond their December 31st deadline, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is feeling pressure from Republicans to allow the programs to expire. The interesting twist here is that …
Why Economic Stimulus?
November 4, 2020We tend to cringe whenever the U.S. Treasury Department announces that it must borrow more than it had expected, since it only means that the U.S. government is adding to its already massive debt problems. Yet its announcement that it expected to borrow “only” $617 billion during the 4thquarter of 2020, considerably less than the $1.22 trillion they estimated earlier, is anything but good news. Nor is the government’s recent announcement that it would require about $1.1 trillion less than had been expected …
David Graeber: A True Public Intellectual
September 25, 2020Progressives the world over are mourning the tragic and untimely death of anthropologist David Graeber. He was one of the few academics who truly “walked the talk,” blending his activism and anarchism with original and pathbreaking research. Graeber is possibly best known for his involvement with Occupy Wall Street (he is frequently credited with coining the term “the 99%”) and his controversial dismissal from Yale University. I did not know him personally but am familiar with some of his professional work, …
On Getting “Back to Normal”
August 13, 2020It is quite understandable that after five months of one unprecedented event after another people in the United States are experiencing Covid fatigue and yearning for a return to normal. But what exactly is “normal?” And should we be wishing for a return to it? The question reminds me of a comedian I saw almost exactly four years ago who was discussing the 2016 contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. “Clinton or Trump,” he mused, “it’s a little like …
The Great Divergence: The Economy and the Stock Market
July 17, 2020Our economy presently faces by far the greatest collapse in the lifetime of most people alive today. Indeed, long after the Covid-19 scare passes, we are likely to remain mired in a high unemployment trap for an extended period. The U.S. economy has lost over 40 million jobs in the past four months, even if several million have been temporarily recovered as a result of the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Plan. Consumption fell by record amounts in April and May …
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