We do not know how severe the covid-19 epidemic will be or how much economic and social pain it will cause, but it clearly has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans, and the economic consequences could include a deep recession and even a financial crisis that will cause misery […]
The Coming Fiscal Crisis Of State And Local Governments Yesterday my wife Marina and I met with our personal attorney, a close friend also, to fix some loose ends in our wills due to some recent family deaths, as well the current situation. He also happens to sit on the Harrisonburg City Council, as well […]
In the quaint, pre-coronavirus world of February, the economy was already very weak I have a post up at Seeking Alpha, taking a look at this morning’s retail sales and industrial production reports for February, and briefly considering their implications for employment in the coming months, even before the impact of coronavirus. Here’s a graph that […]
The Coronavirus Recession (probably) begins Looks like today is going to be an interesting one at the Wall Street casino. As I write this, futures are down -10%. Does this mean Trump has to take back his autographed copies of the surge in the indexes Friday afternoon? I’ve expected this, since the reality that Trump […]
To Slow Spread Of Coronovirus, End Iran Sanctions On 3/13/20 in Foreign Policy Focus, Ariel Gold and Medea Benjamin argue that to improve the global coronavirus problem, sanctions on Iran should be lifted, quite aside from the fact they should never have been imposed in the first place as Iran was adhering to the JCPOA nuclear deal. […]
Europe’s Response to Coronavirus and the Implications for the U.S. As I listened to the morning news about the coronavirus crisis, I was reminded of this critique of the Eurozone: In a recent conference, the distinguished economist Paul Krugman repeated the oft-heard critique that the eurozone is not an optimal currency area. Waltraud Schelkle disagrees with […]
Benefit-Cost Analysis and the Coronavirus We are in the middle of a flurry of decision-making on how to deal with COVID-19. After much resistance, officials are now canceling public events, closing schools and discouraging other activities that put us in contact with each other. Travel restrictions and possible shutdowns of workplaces, as we’ve seen in […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for March 9 – 13 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. There is no clear evidence yet of a drop-off in consumer spending due to the coronavirus in the series I have been tracking, although there is evidence on the producer side. After I […]
Trump Administration Continues to Attack the Environmental Projections First Put Into Place by the Nixon Administration If you, the reader, are uncertain whether to support Trump or whoever the Democratic candidate turns out to be, I urge you to consider the devastating reduction in protections for clean air, clean water, and clean land (thus also […]
The day before yesterday, the Fed made a somewhat unusual announcement of $500,000,000,000 of REPO offers a day for three days in a row. The idea was to let banks unload risky assets before they panicked nipping a financial crisis in the bud. This move was controversial. Unfortunately many critics act as if the Fed […]