Once confident in their wisdom as a profession, many economists today admit they are trying desperately to understand the workings of a globalized system they now realize they never really grasped very well.
With the crucial 2020 U.S. presidential election only days away, that dearth of economic certainty is proving problematic, as politically expedient, populist policies are taking hold in both parties. Economists still wonder how they misread things so badly that Donald Trump could be elected by promising to close borders and start trade wars in a bid to help a devastated middle class.
Many things are taking place:
U.S. Economic Strength Weathers All Storms | The White House
Over the past 13 years, two of the sharpest economic contractions have bookended the longest economic expansion on record. In analysis of the expansion, the Council of Economic Advisers found that the economic expansion beginning in 2017 was not a continuation of the previous period spanning 2009-2016.
During economic expansions, it is typical for growth and job gains to slow as the expansion period matures. However, this is the opposite of what occurred during the 2017-19 expansion period. The pro-growth policies of the Trump Administration bolstered demand for labor, bringing workers off the sidelines, leading to strong wage and income gains for American workers throughout the economy.
Caveat victor - If China's economy is so strong, why isn't its currency stronger?
C HINA, AS ITS leaders like to observe, has fared better than any other big country this year. It has all but halted the covid-19 pandemic, got its economy back on track and, to top it off, reaped a cash windfall from abroad. The last has stemmed from a surge in its trade surplus, thanks in part to its factories running at full tilt, and a rush of money into its bonds, thanks in part to its growth outlook. Victors do, it seems, get the spoils.
It is much harder to answer than in the past. For two decades until mid-2014 China's prodigious accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves was the clear by-product of actions to restrain the yuan, as the central bank bought up cash flowing into the country. A sharp drop in reserves in 2015-16 was evidence of its intervention on the other side, propping up the yuan when investors rushed out. Since then, China's reserves have been uncannily steady. This year they have risen by just 1%.
Legal discrimination stymies economic outcomes for women | YaleNews
Despite decades of progress in addressing gender discrimination, women across the globe face persistent legal barriers to participating in the economy on an equal basis with men, according to a study co-authored by Yale economist Pinelopi Goldberg .
The study, based on the World Bank Group's newly compiled "Women, Business and the Law"(WBL) database, provides the first global picture of how discriminatory laws continue to restrict women's economic opportunities. It documents large and persistent legal gender inequalities, particularly with regards to equal pay and parenting.
And here's another article:
In Building Economic Team, Biden Faces Tug From Left and Center - The New York Times
WASHINGTON — If he wins the presidency, Joseph R. Biden Jr. will inherit an economy struggling to recover from its steepest plunge in decades. His economic team will need to help workers and businesses survive a pandemic winter, while developing policies to address the racial and income inequalities the crisis has exacerbated in the labor market.
Assembling that team would force Mr. Biden to balance competing impulses. He wants to surround himself with aides who have experience battling past downturns — a talent pool that is overwhelmingly white, male and centrist. But he also wants to stock his administration with advisers who represent the racial, gender and ideological diversity of the nation and his party better than previous administrations.
Next week will be full of key U.S.
While Tuesday's U.S. presidential election occupies center stage this coming week, there are several key economic events in the wings that will deepen understanding of the current health of the U.S. economic recovery and may provoke some market volatility.
However with benchmark interest rates stuck at zero and the Fed unwilling to move them into negative territory, economists think the central bank will focus on using its bond-buying program to help the economy, perhaps by increasing the quantity and average maturity of purchases.
NEW: Economic Comeback Under President Trump Breaks 70-Year Record | The White House
News broke this morning that real GDP grew at an annualized rate of 33.1% in the third quarter of 2020—beating expectations and setting an all-time record.
* * *
Thanks to President Trump's policies, the American economy is weathering the global pandemic better than any other major Western country, including those of Europe. As the Council of Economic Advisers wrote this morning:
While the pandemic hit every major economy around the world, the United States experienced the least severe economic contraction of any major Western economy in the first half of 2020, with the Euro Area economy's contraction being 1.5 times as severe as the contraction of the U.S. economy.
Everything I Know About Economics, I Learned From Halloween | Town-Crier Newspaper
The excitement would start, really, the minute the teacher changed the big class calendar on the bulletin board from September to October. There, stapled to October 31, would be an orange construction paper pumpkin. That pumpkin would haunt us all the long days of October. How could we be expected to concentrate on the exports of South America (or whatever the teacher was talking about) with that pumpkin smack in front of us?
No, the importance of coffee and soybeans could not hold a candle to the importance of our discussions on what we were going to dress as for Halloween. There were 31 days in the month and 31 changings of the mind. Commercially produced costumes were a new idea and not something my parents were going to waste money on, that's for sure. Not with my mom being the great seamstress she was. And one year, Jim raided the rag bag and emerged from his room as the coolest mummy ever.
Happening on Twitter
Biden and Trump are both in Wisconsin today. One is taking care to protect the public. One is holding a super sprea… https://t.co/4XGnS7IJBX benwikler (from Wisconsin, USA) Fri Oct 30 12:29:30 +0000 2020
We "can have the corrupt autocrat, with the son-in-law down the hall, in the highest office. But if America can fix… https://t.co/JhiIEj73Dc brhodes (from Washington, DC) Fri Oct 30 16:20:38 +0000 2020
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