A legal office in the White House, at the behest of Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, has decided to redefine the word “earnings” in order to bankrupt the largely dormant Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Economic Policy
Posted inEconomic Policy
Six Ways Zohran Mamdani Can Make New York City Affordable Again
Mamdani begins his term with something few mayors ever have: an energized following and an international megaphone. His administration could launch a 100-day affordability sprint, using executive and emergency powers creatively and expansively to lower costs for ordinary people.
Posted inEconomic Policy
How Do We Rebuild After Trump?
Many Trump critics are focused on what he is doing to our basic democratic compact. But there’s a reason that all the presidents who led us through our worst previous crises also had an aggressive program of reform—including public provision and ownership.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Making Banking Supervision Suck Again
Bank supervision consists of two main prongs: risk management and compliance. On the compliance side, consumer protection laws are being enforced less than at any time since at least the Great Recession.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Trump Selling Out Cattle Ranchers Highlights Structural Food Economy Crisis
To lower beef prices and help out his pal Milei, Trump will quadruple beef quotas from Argentina—and domestic cattle ranchers are going ballistic. But the bigger problem is an America that can no longer feed itself.
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Myth That Mamdani Will Cause New York City’s Richest to Leave
Millionaire tax flight would devastate a future Mamdani administration. If the rich leave, how could anything be financed? But research shows that wealthy individuals move at lower rates than others, even in response to higher personal income taxes.
Posted inEconomic Policy
No, the Boomers Did Not Take It All
The more that young people focus on supposed generational injustices rather than the real injustices of class and power, the less likely they are to embrace a politics that might make a real difference.
Posted inEconomic Policy
Fed Making Key Economic Decisions Without Key Economic Data
The Fed considers information from a variety of sources in setting monetary policy, everything from anecdotal reports to original data produced by its regional Reserve Banks. But the loss of public, and apparently some private, data is an acknowledged blow.
Posted inEconomic Policy
More State (or Is It Just Trump?) Capitalism
Last year, financier Scott Bessent excoriated the Biden administration for its revival of industrial policy. Now as Trump’s Treasury secretary, he the government would be expanding investments in companies in crucial economic sectors.
Posted inEconomic Policy
The Socialist Case for Antitrust
The modern antitrust movement, sometimes called the neo-Brandeisians after the former Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, had a major influence on the Biden administration. Now that Donald Trump has returned to power, what’s next? Over at the new publication The Argument, Matt Bruenig has a critical review of what he calls the urtext of the modern antitrust […]