Update 460: 2Q20 GDP 9.5% Drop ShocksAs Congress Faces Macroeconomic Crisis Today, the statistics. Tomorrow, the screams. The day after learning of the worst quarterly GDP contraction on record, Congressional Republicans made no effort to restore the lifeline Corona unemployment benefits to over 30 million Americans, expiring today. Instead, the GOP proposed cutting them by …
Update 459 — Mitch Ado about Nothing:GOP COVID Bill “Semi-Irrelevant” — Trump If, as polls suggest possible, Republicans are driven from office in November, having lost the White House and their Hill majorities, it won’t just be the price of fealty to Trump. It’s also the deaf ear to the dire needs of nearly 32 …
Update 458 — 2020 Cong. Endorsements: Primary Winners in ME, NE, NJ and TX Washington’s heatwave of tempers and temperatures is reaching a fever pitch, with the impending expiration of key economic relief programs and a summer recess ahead, when members of Congress head back home to focus on the elections in the fall. Today, we …
Update 457– Third Rail Alive and WellSo Social Security Insolvency is Soluble For all of Donald Trump’s disruptions of economic norms, from tariffs to monetary policy, he has stayed far away from entitlement reform. George W. Bush attempted the last structural reform in 2005 when he proposed privatizing a third of Social Security. No hearings …
Update 456: Coming Cutoffs, Cong. Recess Forcing a Fight over Next COVID Package After months of urging from Democrats for another coronavirus package, Congress is finally set to begin active negotiations next week, facing expanded unemployment benefits expiration on July 31 and PPP benefit cutoffs on August 8. With the coronavirus surging in a majority of …
Update 455 — Welcome to Tax Day 2020:The Cost of Fighting COVID via the Code The Trump administration’s reflexive economic policy response to COVID — and just about everything else — has been tax cuts, breaks, deferrals, deductions, and delays. The COVID tax relief measures have gone under the radar but represent a kind of …
Update 454 — What’s Up in the Markets?Less and Less, Pricing in Uncertainty, Fear The dissonance between the real economy’s performance, measured in GDP and unemployment, and that of the capital markets, reflected in prices, trading volume, and IPOs, was never starker than in the second quarter that ended last Tuesday. Stocks had their strongest …
Update 453 — The Paycheck Recovery Act:Nobel Economist Endorses in Bill Hearing A star performance yesterday by economic Nobel laureate Prof. Joseph Stiglitz at a critical bill hearing in an obscure House Financial Services Subcommittee reignited interest in an alternative to the nation’s current COVID economic policy course of response. The bill, H.R. 6918, the …
Update 452 — 2020 Cong. Endorsements: June Winners in GA, NV, NY, SC and VA With June done, we see a vast economic disparity forged by COVID this quarter, the best for market returns in 22 years, but the worst in 80 for unemployment, which leapt from 4.4 on April 1 to 12.3 percent proj. for …
Update 451: COVID’s Summer Hot SpotsArgue for Targeted, Automatic Relief Fix No economic relief or bill, regardless of size, will be scrupulously equitable as regards state, sector, class, generation, etc. Nor would equity on every basis be optimal in all circumstances. Today, Montana and Vermont are both marginally affected by the Coronavirus. Should relief for …
