• June 3, 2022

No Soft Landings

“There’s no soft landing when you’re this far out of equilibrium.”

—Tom Hoenig

• May 20, 2022

Hardening of the Economies

Atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, occurs when substances like cholesterol accumulate and impede your blood flow. This keeps your body from delivering nutrients where needed. Left untreated, it usually doesn’t end well.

• April 8, 2022

Other Possibilities

An old Danish proverb, later attributed to everyone from Mark Twain to Nostradamus to Yogi Berra, says, “Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.” I would refine it a little: Predictions are actually pretty easy. Accurate predictions are very difficult.

• February 25, 2022

The Three-Act Recovery, Plus Your Questions

This week’s news is seemingly all about Ukraine and Russia. It is a terrible situation. But as an economic matter, we still have serious economic challenges no matter how it develops.

• February 18, 2022

Inflation Thoughts

But mouse-friend, you are not alone
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes of Mice and Men
Go oft awry,
And leave us only grief and pain,
For promised joy!

—Robert Burns, “To a Mouse,” English translation

• February 11, 2022

Financialized Everything

Interest rates—the “price of money”—have been unusually low for most of this century, particularly since the 2008 crisis but going back to Greenspan’s era. The wisest people I know differ on exactly why. Was it purely a policy choice, or the result of larger, less-controllable economic forces? I believe the answer is some of both. Whatever the cause, persistently cheap money has had consequences we are only beginning to recognize.

• February 4, 2022

Time to Rethink the Fed

“In many important ways, the financial crash of 2008 had never ended. It was a long crash that crippled the economy for years. The problems that caused it went almost entirely unsolved. And this financial crash was compounded by a long crash in the strength of America’s democratic institutions. When America relied on the Federal Reserve to address its economic problems, it relied on a deeply flawed tool. All the Fed’s money only widened the distance between America’s winners and losers and laid...

• January 28, 2022

So Goes the Year?

You’ve heard the old stock market adage, “As goes January, so goes the year.” If so, 2022 will be a wild ride.

• January 7, 2022

A Path-Dependent Year—WWJD?

Twenty-two years of tradition dictate I begin the new year by forecasting what lies ahead. Unfortunately, the future is never really knowable. “Forecast” is a polite synonym for “guess.” The better ones are informed guesses, but still inherently uncertain.

• December 17, 2021

Inflation by the Numbers

Milton Friedman famously said inflation is “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” He was right but that short statement doesn’t fully explain how inflation works. It has other causes, too. The period in which he did his most famous research showed inflation was clearly a monetary phenomenon, but I’m not sure he would make the same assertion today.