New York Times
WHILE a Senate report detailing Apple’s aggressive tax sheltering of billions of dollars of overseas income grabbed headlines this week, little notice was paid to a surreptitious thrust at tax minimization that was announced at nearly the same moment. Continue reading →
Originally published in the New York Times Let’s stipulate that the scandal involving the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative nonprofit groups portrays government as if drawn in caricature — an almost Keystone Kops-style comedy of errors on the part … Continue reading →
Originally published in the New York Times EUROPE’S economic problems are growing steadily worse, with unemployment in parts of the Continent now above the level reached in the United States during the Great Depression. Meanwhile, policy makers dither over solutions. … Continue reading →
Originally published in the New York Times On its face, Friday’s announcement that the nation’s gross domestic product expanded at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the first quarter was good news, following as it did an only marginally positive … Continue reading →
Originally published in the New York Times President Obama’s new budget, released on Wednesday, is stuffed with constructive ideas. It bravely outlines concrete steps to begin fixing Social Security. It flouts today’s all-deficit-cutting, all-the-time mentality with important proposals for fresh … Continue reading →
Originally published in the New York Times Not surprisingly, troubled economic times often beget proselytizers of wacky, extreme ideas. The stagflation of the 1970s blessed us with damaging wage and price controls and the utterly counterintuitive supply-side notion — famously … Continue reading →
New York Times
Slapping a catchy acronym like the JOBS Act on a piece of legislation makes it more difficult for politicians to oppose it — and indeed that’s what happened with the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. Continue reading →
New York Times
To hear Republicans spin it, the sequester is no big deal — a seemingly tiny 2.3 percent reduction in federal spending. Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric, argues that any C.E.O. who can’t cut 2.3 percent from his company’s expenses should be fired. Continue reading →
New York Times
NEARLY four years after we were enlisted to fight the financial and auto-industry crisis, a small band of Treasury veterans returned one recent evening to the department’s imposing building in Washington, a neo-Classical-style structure bookended by statues of Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin and a stone’s throw from the White House. Continue reading →
New York Times
As recently as 2006, when I first visited India and China, the economic race was on, with heavy bets being placed on which one would win the developing world sweepstakes.
Many Westerners fervently hoped that a democratic country would triumph economically over an autocratic regime.
Now the contest is emphatically over. China has lunged into the 21st century, while India is still lurching toward it. Continue reading →
