“Everybody says don’t … it isn’t right; Don’t, it isn’t nice,” wrote Stephen Sondheim for one of his musicals. A diverse chorus sang those lyrics to Federal Reserve Board chairman Jay Powell. From the center-left of the choir Powell could hear Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, “I do think that there are more risks […]
The fundamentals are still strong. But the stock market collapse is on the president’s thumbs. Share-price volatility is the price we pay for a tweet-driven, rather than a performance-driven, stock market. Especially when the tweeter is capable of a triumphant announcement one day that his tariff war might be ending because he has brought Xi […]
The president has elected himself to GM’s management team. Jawboning: “to attempt to persuade or pressure by the force of one’s position of authority.” Lyndon Johnson did it when Bethlehem Steel raised prices. He denounced the firm’s executives as unpatriotic for feeding inflation during the Vietnam war and they rescinded the increases. Inflation rose anyhow. […]
Unless political peace breaks out, the only way Democrats and Republicans can meet interest payments is to let inflation rip, devalue the dollar. If you think America’s fiscal mess-a deficit in excess of $1 trillion every year for as far ahead as the budgeteer’s eye can see-is no concern of yours, think again. Democrats about […]
If things can’t get better, does that mean they have to get worse? The economy grew at annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter, following an even more robust second-quarter rate of 4.2 percent, the best six-month performance in the past decade. There are more job openings, 7.1 million, than there are unemployed […]
Trump said he would erase America’s debt in 8 years. It’s now bigger than ever. As a candidate, Donald Trump promised to get rid of the entire national debt “over a period of eight years.” When this promise was made, the national debt stood at $19 trillion; it has since risen to $21.7 trillion. In […]
Donald Trump wants Jay Powell to stop raising rates. Like, now. Donald Trump wants fewer and later. Jay Powell, chairman of the Fed, more and sooner. He is confident that his plan is what the booming economy needs: raise the Fed’s benchmark interest rate from its current range of 2 percent to 2.25 percent by […]
Bailouts, inflation, and tariffs-oh my! You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out,” Warren Buffett warned almost a decade ago. Lots of swimmers who have been happily paddling along in the nude are starting to feel a chill as signs mount that the interest-rate tide is indeed starting to expose […]
“Oh, when will they ever learn?” asked Pete Seeger in 1955. Surely not by 2008, when Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest bank in America, was forced to file for bankruptcy after 158 years in business because Wall Street titans had failed to learn the lesson of crises past: that they must all hang together or […]
Jay Powell continues to show his independence from Donald Trump. Thank goodness for disconnects. For three, to be precise. The first is the disconnect between Donald Trump and Jay Powell, the man he appointed to chair the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. It wasn’t too long ago that they seemed joined at […]