American politics is taking a new turn. Out with the personal, confrontational politics of the Trump era, in with the unifying, policy-centered politics of the Biden era. To the fore are battles of over how to confront powerful enemies: Covid, global warming, and an insidious threat to the preservation of the economic system, inequality. True, […]
On Wednesday, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will become the 46th President of the United, a testimonial to the enduring strength of America’s democracy, its resistance to assaults from without and within. His immediate priority is to persuade congress to pass his American Rescue Plan, a $1.9tn relief bill that will add $1,400 to the $600 […]
In 1787, at the close of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether he and the other founding fathers had created a monarchy or a republic. “A republic, if you can keep it,” he is said to have replied. Last week, America proved it can. A Trump-incited mob seized control of the houses of […]
Consider the parties you didn’t have this holiday season merely postponed. So advise economists at Goldman Sachs. They reckon that economic growth will accelerate in the second quarter of this New Year as “mass immunization greatly reduces the virus threat, unleashing a spending boom in the high-contact consumer services sector…”. The investment bank’s contribution to […]
President Trump threw terror into the hearts of millions of Americans by refusing to sign the Covid relief bill, a refusal which if maintained would have brought their benefits to an end. Satisfied that he had proved he retains some relevance, he then agreed late last night to sign it, extracting an agreement from congress […]
This will be a strange Christmas in America. Gloom at the virulence of the new outbreak of Covid-19 shares the stage with joy at the distribution of vaccinations that will ultimately beat the virus. Joy at the arrival of the holiday season is offset by warnings from politicians and the health-care bureaucracy that family gatherings […]
They came to a reunion of the Barack Obama alumni association and left as Joe Biden’s economic team. Many, including then-vice President Biden, proudly claim to have cut their teeth as recession fighters after the 2008 financial crisis. Never mind that the crisis of 2008 was a systemic collapse of the financial system, whereas the […]
Christmas came to America early this year. The Grinch-in-Chief abandoned his efforts to steal not only Christmas but the election, and allowed the transition to proceed as he turned his attention to his 2024 campaign. The about-to-be-President of the United States showed that he meant it when he declared himself a moderate, as that term […]
“Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day I won,” Barack Obama informed Republicans shortly after his first inauguration. Indeed. The economic consequences of our recent election will be more taxes, more regulations, more government involvement in economic life. Not enough more of each to satisfy Joe Biden’s increasingly restive left – Bernie […]
Lost in the Mail Trump to Biden, Congratulations; Biden to Trump, Thanks for the Vaccine You might think that with the election behind us, reporting on the American economy would be less difficult – no pressure from the Trumpers to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative, or from Biden fans to do the opposite. […]