Opinion

Tax debates make for strange bedfellows. During the long, slow recovery from the Great Recession, Americans became accustomed to a familiar economic debate — Keynesians, usually aligned with the Democratic Party, would call for more government spending in order to stimulate the economy, while Republicans would call for cuts in outlays. Eventually, a compromise was reached, though dangerous theatrics were ...

Patrick Drahi, the telecoms billionaire whose debt-fuelled expansion spree is running out of steam, is finding it hard to break free of a downward markets spiral. A full-blown bear attack is still ongoing after last month’s profit warning from Altice SA, the Drahi holding company. Hedge funds have piled up negative bets on a stock that’s fallen 56 percent since ...

With the ongoing synchronized pick-up in global growth, systemically important central banks will likely be more willing and able in 2018 to start and, in one case continue, the normalisation of monetary policy. But what is true for the central banking community as a whole is more nuanced when assessed at the level of individual institutions. Here is the outlook ...

The Republicans’ tax legislation is built on economic projections that are as confidently as they are cheerfully made concerning the legislation’s shaping effect on the economy over the next 10 years. This claim to prescience must amaze alumni of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, which were 85 and 158 years old, respectively, when they expired less than 10 years ago ...

Next week, five members of a regulatory committee will make a decision about one of the biggest threats to democratic discourse Americans have faced in our lifetimes — and it isn’t looking good. On December 14, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on a proposal to end net neutrality. This means that internet service providers would be able to block, ...

It’s become a bipartisan article of faith that US schools need to train more students in STEM. Yet the vast majority of good-paying jobs, now and in the future, don’t require knowing how to code. Improving basic digital skills is a more cost-effective way to boost workers and businesses. There are roughly 14 million ‘middle-skilled’ jobs in the US that ...

The usual Brexit disclaimer — the UK has no good options, only less-bad ones — applies with extra force when it comes to the dilemma over the Irish border. Nevertheless, the issue will be easier to address, if not resolve, once the UK and European Union start trade negotiations in earnest. There is currently no physical border between Northern Ireland, ...

Before the six-member committee that sets monetary policy for the Reserve Bank of India met this week, the government in New Delhi made its preferences very clear. Two members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic advisory council—a body that he did without for a long time, but which was recently reconstituted following several policy stumbles—publicly declared that real interest rates ...

The case of the missing inflation is unresolved, but the fiscal file may have been solved. Good news: The victim is still alive and might start kicking as well. Fiscal policy is shaping up for a good 2018. The impetus mostly takes the form of tax cuts, and is coming from Asia, Europe and the US. We have grown so ...

Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project recently wrote an article in The New York Times suggesting a policy idea that seems extremely promising and woefully overlooked. That idea is what Bruenig calls a social wealth fund—a government-owned portfolio of stocks, bonds and real estate whose dividends would be paid out directly to the citizenry. This is similar to what ...