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Broadcast November 2, 2001 Will the war on terrorism enhance globalization, further immersing America in the global economy? Or will it cause us to retreat or try to retreat from the rest of the globe? At first glance, the war seems to have generated a flowering of multilateralism. Western Europe and America haven’t been closer […]

Broadcast September 27, 2001 Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has told Congress to wait and see what happens before enacting a stimulus package. Congress is heeding his advice. It shouldn’t. A stimulus is needed right away. Even before the September 11th terrorist attack, American consumers were in a deep funk. Personal savings rates were nearing […]

Broadcast June 7, 2001 Presidents are lucky if they accomplish one big thing in a term of office. The American political system is designed to make even one big thing difficult to get done, especially if there’s no economic or foreign crisis to coral public support. President Bush has already got done one very big […]

The Financial Times Like generals preparing to fight the old war, the world’s central bankers are still obsessed with inflation. They should be looking forward to the real enemy: deflation. Look around the world and what you see are identical policies in favour of trimming public spending, cutting debt, raising interest rates and squeezing money […]

The New Republic Last week the Congressional Budget Office confirmed what every semiconscious observer of the budget process had known for months: that proposed spending by President Bush and Congress would force the government to take $9 billion from the ostensibly sacrosanct Social Security surplus. And over the following three years, CBO projected, the government […]

The tax rebate is a policy made in sound-bite heaven. Forget complicated mouthfuls like phased-in reductions in marginal income tax rates; forget the AMT and the EITC. Just calculate the surplus, and put the excess money in the mail. It’s not surprising then, that the rebate has been the only area of consensus in this […]

The great budget surplus is evaporating. The culprit is George W. Bush’s tax cut, compounded by the economic slowdown. Seemingly, this spells bad political news for Bush. He is having to violate his pledge that the Social Security surplus would never be tapped for general government outlays. The vanishing surplus vindicates the criticism that the […]

Propelled by Alan Greenspan’s sudden conversion, George W. Bush’s crusade for a massive general tax cut seems all but unstoppable. The Democrats need to offer something better, and fast, or we will soon have Reagan II. Here is the background: The federal budget surplus will total some $5.6 trillion over the next decade, even allowing […]