Political Economy

Last week, a friend from business school who I met up with in New York in early March told me she had taken an antibody test for coronavirus and came back positive. Her first thought was about donating blood, whereas my first thought was…

Real quick here because I am a bit under the weather The snapback This morning I retweeted a tweet by former Fed economist Claudia Sahm about the dire economic numbers in the US, saying: Can we call this a depression already? What…

The model I have a bit of a problem. I am not sure how to put today's post together. What I plan to dissect is the economic outlook as we escape coronavirus lockdowns. But, economies are so complex and the outlook is so uncertain that it's…

Today's newsletter is going to be more of a potpourri from the international economic and market news flow than a theme-specific post. Before I proceed, let me say a few words about the dire sentiment associated with this pandemic. Negative…

It's easy to get pessimistic, looking at the economic outlook from the US, which has been a laggard during the coronavirus pandemic. The United States has a ways to go before a semblance of economic normalcy returns. But I have been…

This is a follow-on post to the one I wrote on 23 March predicting there would be a rush to exit lockdowns because of the economic consequences of the full stop to our economy. I've re-read that post. And I stand by my view that the base…

I participate in a weekday markets briefing at Real Vision these days. I love these. They're timely, spontaneous and fun. It's something we started there because markets have been so volatile and fast-moving in the wake of the coronavirus…

This post title may not seem relevant right now. But, let me explain it first. I was looking through my post drafts folder this morning, deleting ones that never made it to publication. And this post title popped up as having been…

Framing the problem The question on my mind today is about best case economic outcomes. How does a country get through the Covid-19 pandemic with the least bad economic outcome? And in thinking about that question, I want to do three…

Morning thoughts Let's hit on several themes today that I've covered in the past which are advancing. The overall context here is that we have escaped a first wave of dreadful information flow, with policy makers doing their utmost to take…