Update 427: Corona 3 Implementation StartsMoney Out When? Stimulating a Dead Horse? The incredible shrinking and increasingly virtual U.S. economy is being transformed by the coronavirus into something we have never seen before and increasingly hard to spot. Ten million jobs have vanished in under two weeks and the famous flattening of the curve is …
Update 426: New Economic Misery Index;Weekly Initial Jobless Claims Out Tomorrow With the nation bracing for more bad news tomorrow, the sense in Congress is that the historic $2 trillion Corona III won’t be enough. Indeed, talks (over the phone) are already in progress on a fourth Corona bill. We hear some talk of a …
Update 425— Longest U.S. Expansion Ever in Jeopardy; 3.28 Million Newly Jobless Overnight The ink is now dry on the $2 trillion Corona III relief package, as the House has figured out how to conduct a voice vote on the massive bill today, with almost all members in their home districts, some opposed to it, …
Update 424 — America Starts Spring Broke;Senate Set to OK Biggest Spending Bill Ever The COVID epidemic is far from over, as are its economic repercussions and the policy responses to them. Today, the US Senate will adopt a third relief package (stimulus would be mostly misnomer), this one bigger than any federal spending measure …
Update 423 — Senate Poised to Vote Tonighton Largest Stimulus Bill in American History Befitting the worst economic and civic crisis confronting the nation in nearly a century, the GOP Senate leadership is preparing legislation in scope and scale that could spare vast material wreckage, or make it inevitable, or worse. What happens on the …
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Update 422: Virus Stops Economy Cold;Congress in Search of Plan, Consensus Legislation to address the impact of the coronavirus is making its way through the Congressional mill. An initial $8 billion targeted relief package was enacted last week. This week, the House and Senate have taken a week to hammer out the finer points of …
Update 414: The Price of Poverty Before we go to Las Vegas, the site of tonight’s Democratic presidential debate, let’s have a look at what happens when wages are lost to layoffs or when luck turns and a car wreck or a diagnosis pushes a family over the economic edge. How many Americans are living …
Update 409 — Domestic Economic Priorities:Modernizing Assistance for U.S. Households Domestic economic policy in the United States has failed to keep pace with the changing economy, the needs of workers, consumers and investors, and the reality of international competition. When political circumstances finally allow, what area of domestic economic policy is in most dire need …
The world will little note nor long remember the year-end fiscal package that Congress is poised to pass tonight. But it will get almost twice as many votes as impeachment and may be a more unambiguous win for Speaker Pelosi and congressional Democrats. Once this $1.4 trillion tax and spending package is passed and signed, …
Update 403 — Paul Volcker in Memoriam Paul Volcker, Federal Reserve Chairman from 1979 to 1987, advisor to four U.S. presidents, policymaker and public servant par excellence, died on Sunday at 92. He will be remembered best for working to curtail the worst inflation crisis in the nation’s history and for the Volcker Rule, a …
