Over the past month, as Greece has occupied headlines, China has been rocked by a crashing stock market. The oscillations appear far from over, with the Shanghai exchange up 6 percent on Wednesday, having plummeted more than 30 percent in the weeks before, which still leaves the index up about 80 percent over the past 52 weeks. That amounts to trillions of dollars gained and then lost in a very short time.
Read moreDon’t Believe the Hype About Greece
The Greek vote is important for the economic future of Greece. And it may damage the economies of Greece’s European neighbors. But Greece is an economic minnow that becomes larger only due to symbolism and collective bad decisions in the Eurozone.
Read moreThe Greek Catastrophe Is Finally Here (Unless It Isn’t)
It was a grim weekend in Greece, and it’s likely to be an even grimmer week ahead, both for the Greeks and the European (and possibly world) economy. What wouldnormally be the beginning of the profitable tourist season—a summer idyll in the lovely Greek islands and crowds piling into the Parthenon—has turned into the next chapter of the slow-motion economic train wreck that the world has been witnessing queasily since 2011. Now the wreck is finally here, and the only real question—the one none of us can really answer—is whether it will be modest or huge.
Read moreGDP’s Going Down? That’s Good!
It’s our national mantra: GDP. Gross Domestic Product. No other figure rules our world more completely. We saw it again this week when the government released its latest revision of the first-quarter GDP numbers that showed the U.S. economy is contracting slightly. The only thing that’s now growing, it seems, is the fretting of pundits and economists over the new numbers. Their common cry: How do we get things moving again?
Read moreWhat Putin Gets Right About America
I hate to say it, but Vladimir Putin might be right. America says it no longer wants to be the world’s policeman. So why, as Putin complained, is the U.S. now acting like the world’s prosecutor?
Read moreThe Democrats’ Meaningless Trade Revolt
When is everyone going to realize this train left the station a long time ago?
Read moreWhat the Kentucky Derby Owes to China
As hundreds of thousands congregate in Louisville this weekend for a classic American ritual, the 140th running of the Kentucky Derby, they will find it hard not to notice of one of the most prominent local sponsors of the event, Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC, known to the world as “Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
Read moreAre the Germans Going to Crash the World Economy?
As Greece squeezes by without a “Grexit” — earlier this week eurozone ministers approved a four-month bailout extension— markets, politicians, pundits are far calmer today than they were a few years ago. Back then, in the fall of 2011, the prospect of a eurozone without Greece sent global markets into turmoil. Granted, it was bad year, what with a near-U.S. debt default and pervasive fears of a European Monetary Union undone by mountains of bad bank debt. By late November 2011, international credit markets were exhibiting the same danger signs of stress that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, and it appeared that the long-feared next stage of a global financial implosion was at hand. It took the simultaneously actions of the world’s central banks, followed by a “final” bailout of Greece by the “troika” of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the Eurozone countries to the tune of 240 billion Euros.
Read moreIs Hillary Running for Bill’s Third Term?
When Hillary Clinton announces her candidacy on Sunday, the Republicans will no doubt redouble their efforts to make the case that a vote for Hillary is a vote for Barack Obama’s third term—and the GOP believes no one wants that, for Pete’s sake. Clinton’s campaign, by contrast, will almost certainly make a very different case: If they vote for her, Americans will be getting something far closer to Bill Clinton’s third term.
Read moreLead, America, or Get Out of the World’s Way
The United States is doing a poor job of leading the global economy. But apparently we won’t let anyone else lead it either. In a world increasingly defined by the global flow of goods and services, Washington finds not just curiously adrift but actively at odds with itself and a coherent approach.
Read moreHillary’s Not the Problem
For Hillary Clinton—and most of Washington—email-gate may be a relatively new issue, but it is an issue with a decades-long pedigree in American history. Once upon a time, in the era before email and whose “server” was whose, it wouldn’t have been an issue at all: Dean Acheson, for instance, lived in no fear that the public would have access to his personal letters musing about the intentions of Stalin or the presence of possible Soviet spies in the State Department alleged by Joe McCarthy, or any number of other matters of state. Long before that, presidents in particular were free to keep or dispose of their papers as they saw fit; one obscure president, Chester Arthur, sealed his obscurity by instructing his family to burn his papers after his death.
Read moreA Shameful Climate Witch Hunt
Let the climate inquisition begin. The ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, has written to seven universities about seven researchers who harbor impure thoughts about climate change.
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 moreDon’t Turn America Into Europe
The Europeans—some of them, anyway—are finally beginning to concede that austerity has gone awry. There’s less growth, more structural unemployment, little bank lending and economic contraction. And now, of course, we have a political backlash in the person of Alexis Tsipras, the leader of Greece’s Syriza party, who upon winning the prime ministership last Sunday declared grandly (and probably over-optimistically) that Greece will now “leave behind the austerity that ruined it.”
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 moreA Dynamic World Demands Dynamic Scoring
One of the first things the new Republican Congress voted on this week was to mandate a change in how the Congressional Budget Office analyzes (“scores”) spending bills. A technocratic change in how Congress assesses the impact of its proposed bills is not typically the stuff of great drama. This time is different.
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 moreNo, This is NOT the ’90s Economy Again
With only one more report left, 2014 is shaping up to be the best year for job creation since 1999. Predictably enough, last week’s strong numbers (321,000 jobs added) inspired some commentators to suggest that the report was not just good news,
Read moreHow The Ruble Crash Could Strengthen Putin
The ruble is crashing, but the Russian government isn’t going to any time soon. Ironically, Russia's economic distress might even make Vladimir Putin stronger.
The reasons for the ruble’s rapid decline – it’s dropped by nearly 13 percent against the dollar in November alone, and this week has seen more of the same—are neither obscure or surprising.
Read moreWhy Keystone is a Canard
Sideshows can be immensely entertaining and highly distracting. Old-time circuses had bearded ladies, freaks and strongmen; today in America we have the Keystone XL pipeline. It is the ultimate sideshow, one masquerading as a solution to real problems when, in fact, it is largely symbolic, and not particularly potent symbolism at that.
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