As the United States heads into its grim pandemic winter, Congress remains deadlocked on passing a new stimulus bill.
Read moreAs Congress Fails to Act, Only the Fed Can Save the Economy
With COVID-19 surging across the country, and state after state enacting new restrictions as individuals adjusting to a more widespread contagion, these programs could be needed in the coming months, just as Mnuchin is attempting to end them.
Read moreIf We Don't Move Fast, the Economy Is Going to Get Much Worse
Regardless of the electoral outcome, doing nothing until February 2021 after a new Congress and President are sworn in could well plunge the country back toward the depths of March when a major depression seemed upon us.
Read moreThe Ugly Partisan Truth Behind President Trump's Stimulus Roadblock
That fact alone would suggest the need for further government stimulus, but hope for that faded after the president announced that he was uninterested in further stimulus bill until after the election, though he then backtracked and suggested he was open to some action.
Read moreAmerica is a Tale of Fractured Economic Realities and That's Stopping Us From Fixing this Crisis
Given how much economic damage the pandemic continues to cause, it seems astonishing that Washington has been unable to muster any action since the spring.
Read moreWe Don't Just Need More Stimulus — We Need Smarter Stimulus
With the Republican-led Senate only just now unveiling its first draft of a next stimulus package and passage of a final bill dependent on weeks of arduous negotiations between Congress and the White House, the already-tenuous economic recovery just became more tenuous.
Read moreThe COVID-19 Recession Should Be So Much Worse. Why Hasn't It Been?
And yet, as bad as things are economically, it remains an open question why things aren’t worse. The answer is simple, and challenging: we may all be in this together as humans facing a virus but we are not equally in this together in bearing the economic toll.
Read moreA Safety Net Should Help People Feel Safe. The U.S. Managed to Do the Opposite
The primary reason for this massive surge in unemployment is of course the pandemic and the economic shutdowns to contain it. But government policy is also to blame.
Read moreJanet Yellen's Quiet Revolution
Donald Trump turned his rhetorical bazooka on Janet Yellen this week, accusing the Fed chair of being “highly political” and merely doing President Barack Obama’s bidding by declining to raise interest rates. In this as in so many things he says, Trump was issuing wisdom from his rear end, but the GOP candidate from clowntown did serve one useful purpose. He prompted us to ask yet again: What is Janet Yellen’s game?
Read moreFMN: Leading Indicators - A Brief History of Numbers That Rule Our World
Zachary Karabell on Leading Indicators of Success Every day we are bombarded with numbers. Some tell us how we are doing. Others indicate whether the economy is growing or shrinking and whether the future looks bright or dim. Figures showing gross national product, balance of trade, unemployment, inflation and consumer confidence guide our actions, yet few of us know what they mean or why they are so important.
Read moreWhy the Jobs Report Means Diddly
The monthly ritual known as the jobs report made its appearance last week, followed metronomically by the monthly ritual of commentary and political reaction to the jobs report. It was a good report, as they go, with “ better-than-expected” job creation, more workers returning to look for work (hence a slightly higher unemployment rate of 5.7 percent) and major upward revisions to reported job creation in November and December of 2014.
Read moreReinterpreting Jobs Report
CNBC Contributor Zachary Karabell, weighs on the nature of U.S. jobs growth and higher wages.
Read moreWhere Was Obama When the Middle Class Needed Him?
Six long years into presidency, Barack Obama has finally made the middle-class an explicit priority— placing “middle-class economics,” as he called it repeatedly in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, front and center on his agenda. But what the president is asking for may be too little and it’s arriving far too late. While his proposals are sensible— lowering the tax burden on middle-class families and expanding access to education, job training and retirement, in part by closing loopholes and raising taxes on capital gains—very few of them have much chance of passing.
Read moreWill Politics in 2015 Catch Up with the Economy?
In the waning moments of 2014, something happened that had been a long-time coming but seemed it might never arrive: the public mood in America shifted, ever so slightly yet significantly, from negativity and pessimism about the arc of the economy to something approximately hope about the future. If that holds, 2015 is going to look and feel rather different, and rather better, than things have in years.
Read moreEconomists Think That Wages Are Going to Rise This Year
The Leading Indicators: Zachary Karabell
For too long, says author Zachary Karabell, we've adhered to outdated statistics for measuring economic health. Why follow a '50s road map in the 21st century when newer, more useful guides are available?
Read moreBook TV After Words: Zachary Karabell, "The Leading Indicators."
There are a set of five economic indicators that have been guiding U.S. economic policy for decades, but most are not understood by the average citizen and, Mr. Karabell argues, are not as relevant today as when they were created. Gross national product, balance of trade, unemployment, inflation and consumer confidence should no longer be the primary basis for business plans or monetary policy, he says, as the technology revolution has made considerably more data available. He talks with Wall Street Journal reporter Kimberly Strassel.
Read moreOld Statistics, New Take
Economist Zachary Karabell suggests a different take on the available data and statistics, making it more relevant to the individual. National averages that are often relied heavily upon, he says, are rarely useful in any given individual's life.
Read moreMissing Persons Report
The latest edition of the Bureau of Labor Statistics report is out, and it shows that, statistically speaking, the U.S. added 175,000 new jobs in February and its unemployment rate rose slightly to 6.7 percent. The insta-reaction world greeted the report as better news than expected.
Read moreHow Counting the Unemployed Started as a Progressive Reform
In an excerpt from his book, reprinted here by permission of Simon & Schuster, Karabell traces how employment data collection originated as a progressive antidote to economic inequality. But even the reformists who developed those statistics, Karabell notes, were wary of the “mania for statistics.”
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