Politics

The incoming data in the US make clear that the US is now also in jeopardy of recording a double dip recession because of the latest Covid-19 wave, just as Europe before it. Moreover, the data also make clear that there is no healthcare -…

In the last post, I linked to the wrong video at Real Vision. The one I linked to was about Europe's shutdowns and a worsening Covid-19 pandemic. I wanted to link to Monday October 26th discussion. Here is the link. I also found a comment…

Today's ADP jobs report makes plain that the US economy's V-shaped recovery is moving toward the reverse radical section of the upturn. The question is whether politics and the Covid-19 crisis add to downside risk. My view until now has…

I want to take the most macro view possible today. We have a major US election upon us. And we are also experiencing significant increases in Covid-19 infections in Europe and North America. These are events with a wide dispersion of…

The jobless claims series came out again this morning showing 840,000 initial claims plus a modest revision upward of last week's number to 849,000. These numbers just aren't coming down fast enough. And we know from the last recovery that…

The calls for fiscal relief by the Federal Reserve have apparently fallen on deaf ears, as US President Trump pulled out of negotiations for a stimulus package last night. Asset markets were all over the place as investors digested the…

My view for the last several weeks is that September and October is where the rubber hits the road for the US economy. By that time, the second spike in coronavirus cases will have diminished and we will get a more realistic forward-looking…

I am a bit time-constrained today. So I want to make this a relatively brief post. I am going to focus narrowly on initial claims for unemployment insurance in the US and on the political struggle to aid the 30 million people unemployed due…

When I last wrote about the US economy on Friday, I wrote that the jobs numbers "support my baseline view that the rollover in US GDP growth has been mild so far. The threat to that outlook comes in the form of policy and the anticipated…

In yesterday's post, I was mostly upbeat about near-term economic outcomes. The overall gist was that we are going to see a snapback recovery soon that makes this the shortest recession on record. But, the snapback won't get us to anywhere…