December is usually a time for looking back on the past year and forward to the year ahead. In 2019, we have witnessed rising political extremism (on both the...
Recession fears are gripping Europe and spreading globally. Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union now seems imminent, and Italy’s government has just...
Two years ago, it seemed clear to me that a combination of factors would lead to increased calls to regulate technology companies, especially big tech giants...
With the first debate between Democratic candidates just four months away, the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign is off to an early start.This election will be...
For many of the world’s economies, financial markets, heads of government and carbon policies, 2018 did not end well. The scars of the global financial crisis...
U.S. President Donald Trump claims credit for “the greatest ever” economy, and constantly contrasts economic conditions today with the historically weak...
The U.S. economy is growing, inflation has finally hit the U.S. Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target, and unemployment is quite low – and at an all-time low for...
If one looks past the headlines of the media’s full-time Donald Trump coverage, one can discern a global shift in political, economic and cultural forces that...
In late November, a group of economists, including me, published an open letter to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin in the Wall Street Journal,...
All major macroeconomic indicators – growth, unemployment and inflation – suggest that 2017 will be the American economy’s best year in a decade. And the...
Several years ago, I predicted that there would be a tectonic shift toward devolution, secession and independence around the world, owing to the failure of...
The United States’ economy is growing at a modest pace, with low unemployment and inflation. Normally, these conditions would strengthen a U.S. president’s...
U.S. President Donald Trump’s transactional approach to multinational agreements is very different from that of his predecessors. Whereas previous presidents...
The first few weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency have contained what felt like a year’s worth of activity and rancor. The U.S. media is “all Trump, all the...
Donald Trump’s surprise election as the 45th president of the United States has spawned a cottage industry of election post-mortems and predictions, in...
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” Mark Twain quipped. For generations, political leaders have been lending credence to that observation, as...
In this, the 400th year since William Shakespeare’s death, the United Kingdom faces an existential question: to be or not to be “European.” When Britons vote...
Big changes are underway in the United States as the country gears up to elect a new president, one-third of the Senate, and the entire House of...
The Chinese government’s heavy-handed efforts to contain recent stock market volatility – the latest move prohibits short selling and sales by major...
In the 25 years before the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the United States experienced two brief, mild recessions and two strong, long expansions. Globally,...
Far too few governments rein in their countries’ bloated welfare states before disaster strikes. As a result, some citizens eventually suffer the economic...
Elections often turn on the state of the economy, especially in hard times. When growth and jobs are down, voters throw out incumbents – whether Spanish...
Barack Obama’s administration suffered a string of fiscal setbacks this summer. But has it learned anything in recent months? First, at the G-20...
Sub-national governments – states, countries, cities, provinces, towns, and special districts – play different roles from country to country, but...
As economies around the world return to growth after the deepest recession in a generation, renewed attention is being paid to enormous fiscal deficits and...