Connecting the Dots

Many Americans are worried about “modern monetary theory.” They fear a future Congress will use it to justify sharply higher spending and enlarge the national debt to unsustainable levels.

Some things are so horrible, you don’t want to think about them.

Many people are worried socialism will take over the US. They’re sure it will be awful.

Five years ago this month, Ukraine’s “Euromaidan” Revolution led to Russian forces occupying the Crimean peninsula and parts of Eastern Ukraine. The US and Europe imposed economic sanctions in response. Pundits like me proclaimed a new Cold War.

The US and China are racing to craft some kind of trade agreement before March 2, or else President Trump says he will impose stiff new tariffs.

The simmering trade war is still... well, simmering. Markets rise and fall with each new rumor.

Actions speak louder than words. That’s why surveys asking people what they think about the economy aren’t always useful. Their actions might not match what they tell pollsters.

Much of the US government remains in shutdown as I write this, including the IRS.

Here we are in 2019, our last chance to make the Twenty-Teens a decade that worked. Whether you think it worked depends partly on whether you worked… and how well you were paid for it.

Baby Boomers get blamed for all kinds of problems. Much of the blame is unfair, but there is no doubt the first postwar generation brought a lot of changes—culturally, economically, and otherwise.

We have a temporary truce in the trade war. No one is quite sure if it will last, especially financial markets, which after a short-lived rally saw little to celebrate in the latest Trump-Xi meeting. 

Here’s a question whose answer is rarely pleasant: “What could go wrong?”