About Time Stacey Abrams on Biden’s leadership, Georgia’s election and challenging voter suppression, PBS New Hour January 21, 2021 Judy Woodruff: And, in fact, what we saw in 2020 and at the end of the election, President Trump and the people who support him making almost the opposite argument, that too much has been done […]
Four years ago I wrote “Those Who Cannot See Must Feel,” which is the (quote)“translation of an old German saying that I used to hear from my grandmother when I misbehaved. It is pretty clear that, over the next four years, the American public is going to do a lot of feeling .… The results […]
Ezra Klein has moved to the New York Times, and he has a very good piece up today. His argument is familiar to anyone who follows his work, but well-argued and definitely worth reading. He begins with this: President Biden takes office with a ticking clock. The Democrats’ margin in the House and Senate couldn’t […]
Will North Korea Explode After Biden Becomes President? This is what was forecast in a column in the Washington Post by Victor Cha. He sees a combination of economic collapse, a massive spread of Covid-19, and a standard desire when a new US president to enter the office to be behind a possible outbreak of […]
David Hopkins has an interesting take on the failure of Trump’s presidency: Regardless of these challenges, the general verdict on Trump among historians and political scientists, reporters and commentators, and most of the Washington political community (including, at least privately, many Republicans) is guaranteed to range from disappointment and mockery to outright declarations that he […]
There is evidence from Israel that one dose of the Pfizer vaccine is less effective than was suggested by the few person-days of evidence in the phase III trials. In Israel “over 12,400 have people tested positive for coronavirus after receiving vaccine shots” Israeli health officials estimate that one shot is about 50% effective after […]
This is an extended post on the caveat to debt and taxes 1. It is joint work with Brad DeLong and Barbara Annicchiarico. The point is that, in his Presidential Address, Olivier Blanchard notes that the argument that higher debt causes increased welfare is weaker than the argument that it is feasible. The Treasury can […]
“Restoring Medicaid,” What happens when states switch to Block Grants? I came across a NYT article citing Seema Verma’s approval of the Tennessee’s Block Grant recently. The Tennessee Block Grant is mentioned in section ” Revoke The Block Grant Initiative” of my post Restoring Medicaid. What Are Block Grants? Government funded normal Medicaid has established […]
Good news (industrial production) and bad news (retail sales) This morning’s two reports on industrial production and retail sales for December were a case of good news and bad news. Let’s do the good news first. Industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, rose 1.6% in December. The manufacturing component rose by 1.0%. Needless to […]