(Source: Bloomberg) Every January, our global corporate and financial executive superstars, accompanied by assorted heads of state and deep thinkers, make the trek up the Alps to the Swiss village of Davos. They don’t come to party, though they do their share of imbibing. They come instead to “solve” the world’s problems. The world faces […]

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When it comes to trade policy, President Barack Obama is mimicking the same policies he criticized when he served in the Senate. As a presidential candidate, Obama promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), recognizing the enormous loss of domestic jobs caused by its passage 20 years ago. He sure hasn’t done […]

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(Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen | Source: Reuters) Under incoming Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, the United States Federal Reserve Bank will begin to “taper” its program of “Quantitative Easing” or “QE.” Under QE, the Fed every month buys billions of U.S. Treasury bonds and other securities from the big banks. QE keeps down longer-term […]

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Half a century ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared a “War on Poverty.” That war would soon make a real difference. In the decade following its 1964 launch, our official poverty rate dropped from 19 to 11.2 percent. But that progress stalled in the 1970s, and a profound economic insecurity now afflicts the vast majority of […]

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Teaching macroeconomics with a group of union stewards and local leaders last month, I had just finished explaining the enormous economic stimulus the combination of “food stamps” and unemployment compensation is providing to our struggling economy. When you include the “macroeconomic multiplier effects” of these “automatic stabilizers,” it was about $260 billion in 2012, and […]

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