The enormous magnitude of Donald Trump’s victory suggests that his win stemmed from a plethora of factors. But according to nearly every poll, the economy was at the top of voters’ concerns about the Biden-Harris administration. Voters were deeply troubled about inflation and its impact on their spending power. While the data indicates that “real […]
The Commerce Department announced on Wednesday that the U.S. economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.8% in the third quarter. A day earlier, the Conference Board reported the biggest increase in consumer confidence in three years Those are just the latest in a string of good reports that underscored our position as the world’s […]
Kamala Harris’s standing with voters on issues around the economy has been improving in recent days. It’s hard to know with any precision what accounts for that but perhaps the soundness of her economic proposals relative to those of Donald Trump has been playing a role. Just yesterday (Wednesday), 23 Nobel economists released a letter […]
In an interview Tuesday at the Economic Club of Chicago, Donald Trump pronounced “tariff” to be the “most beautiful word in the dictionary.” Unfortunately, the vast majority of economists would doubtless proclaim “tariff” to be among their least favorite words in the economic lexicon. Trump’s somewhat tempestuous hour-long session was replete with other falsehoods, such […]
In this policy-light presidential election campaign, among the many issues that have not gotten sufficient attention is what each of the two candidates would do to address fiscal matters like taxes and government spending. Remarkably, the nation’s growing debt and large budget deficit have been even less discussed. That the nation faces a […]
This year’s election is just five weeks away and of course, the most important contest will be the one at the ballot box on November 5. But in the meantime, another important contest is underway: the race to see which candidate and which party can raise the most money. In that tussle, we have a […]
As hoped, the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday that it would reduce its target interest rate by 0.5% in a signal that the central bank was shifting its focus from fighting inflation to providing a small spur to an economy that appears to be slowing modestly. Importantly, the Fed renewed its expectation that the economy is […]
Tuesday night’s debate was perhaps more dramatic than most expected, but one characteristic of it was also quite remarkable: the extent to which Donald Trump indulged in outright lies. Significantly, according to independent fact checkers, his number of falsehoods (22) was vastly greater than the single incorrect statement by his opponent, Kamala Harris. […]
One of the more interesting ironies of the political dynamic is that the Republican philosophy of government — less spending and lower taxes — would most benefit the “blue states” while bigger government has been disproportionately beneficial to the red states. Accordingly, if Donald Trump is returned to the presidency, his policies, particularly on the […]
Donald Trump took to the stage in North Carolina Wednesday to outline his economic program. As usual, his 75-minute-long performance included a mix of a formal address and a semi-hysterical rant, which, also as usual, included a mix of fact and fiction. He claimed that during his presidency, we took in hundreds of billions of […]
