Balancing the other-worldly success of a few in contrast with the challenges many still face is one of the thornier dilemmas of a post-COVID-19 world where those gaps have grown ever wider.
Read moreWhy You Should Be Wary of Claims That the Stock Market Is in a Bubble
Almost exactly a year ago at this time, I warned that markets were due for a sharp correction and that the emergence of COVID-19 was more than a valid reason.
Read moreAmerica's Cities Are in Crisis. They Should be Allowed to Raise Debt to Save Themselves
That kind of help from the federal government has been sorely lacking during the pandemic—and is utterly essential to any meaningful and sustainable economic recovery for the whole country.
Read moreWhat Can We Expect After the Pandemic?
Zachary Karabell reviews four books that focus on what we should expect after the pandemic: The Corona Crash, Life After Covid-19, Post-Corona, and The New Great Depression.
Read moreIf We’re Serious About Saving the U.S. Economy, We Need to Bail Out the Cities
As the United States heads into its grim pandemic winter, Congress remains deadlocked on passing a new stimulus bill.
Read moreAs Congress Fails to Act, Only the Fed Can Save the Economy
With COVID-19 surging across the country, and state after state enacting new restrictions as individuals adjusting to a more widespread contagion, these programs could be needed in the coming months, just as Mnuchin is attempting to end them.
Read moreIf We Don't Move Fast, the Economy Is Going to Get Much Worse
Regardless of the electoral outcome, doing nothing until February 2021 after a new Congress and President are sworn in could well plunge the country back toward the depths of March when a major depression seemed upon us.
Read moreThe Ugly Partisan Truth Behind President Trump's Stimulus Roadblock
That fact alone would suggest the need for further government stimulus, but hope for that faded after the president announced that he was uninterested in further stimulus bill until after the election, though he then backtracked and suggested he was open to some action.
Read moreAmerica is a Tale of Fractured Economic Realities and That's Stopping Us From Fixing this Crisis
Given how much economic damage the pandemic continues to cause, it seems astonishing that Washington has been unable to muster any action since the spring.
Read moreThe Economic Model of Higher Education Was Already Broken. Here's Why the Pandemic May Destroy It for Good
With the fall semester upon us, colleges and universities unveiled their plans for students—and many are just as quickly upending those plans.
Read moreIt’s Official: Conventions Are History. So What Replaces Them?
The parties killed the convention before the pandemic. Now they have a chance to reinvent it.
Read moreWe Don't Just Need More Stimulus — We Need Smarter Stimulus
With the Republican-led Senate only just now unveiling its first draft of a next stimulus package and passage of a final bill dependent on weeks of arduous negotiations between Congress and the White House, the already-tenuous economic recovery just became more tenuous.
Read moreThe Anti-American Century
The Anti-American Century may turn out to be aggressively hostile to the United States, but for now it is anti-American mostly in the sense of being antithetical to the American Century.
Read moreThe COVID-19 Recession Should Be So Much Worse. Why Hasn't It Been?
And yet, as bad as things are economically, it remains an open question why things aren’t worse. The answer is simple, and challenging: we may all be in this together as humans facing a virus but we are not equally in this together in bearing the economic toll.
Read moreHow to Avoid the Shutdown 'Kill Switch'
Ninety days into the Covid-19 pandemic and shutdown, American leaders now have to confront an unsettling truth: Bringing an entire economy to a halt so fast, and so widely, isn’t a decision they can just reverse.
Read moreA Safety Net Should Help People Feel Safe. The U.S. Managed to Do the Opposite
The primary reason for this massive surge in unemployment is of course the pandemic and the economic shutdowns to contain it. But government policy is also to blame.
Read moreNo Matter How Dire the Coronavirus Threat, Fear Is Not the Way Out
And he would recognize in the United States today something very similar to early 1933, that in the throes of a viral pandemic, we are mired in a psychological one as well: we are in the grip of fear, and it is paralyzing us.
Read moreIf Trump Says it, Does That Mean it's Not True?
Fear of the disease is rational, but the response of “Stay home until there is no fear” is not. We need to start solving this problem — and opening schools, regardless of who says what.
Read moreTrump Picks the Worst Possible Moment to Attack China
It would be difficult to select a worse moment not just to escalate the rhetoric against China for its culpability in the globalization of COVID-19 but to consider a raft of economic sanctions.
Read moreTo Survive the Pandemic, Washington Needs to Learn How to Listen
But it also reveals a problem in how the United States has handled the crisis so far: A policy vacuum is being filled by one set of experts rather than a more comprehensive approach that balances risks and shifts when necessary.
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