Monthly Archives: March 2018

Sure as night follows day, Republicans rediscover the temporarily suppressed horror of deficits once the ink is dry on tax giveaways to rich. And the cure, of course, is cutting what remains of social outlays. The Republican tax bill increased the ten-year deficit by well over a trillion dollars. Now comes Martin Feldstein, Harvard eminence and former chair of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, writing in The Wall Street Journal to sound the alarm. But in a splendid display of selective myopia, Feldstein [...]

In the months after September 1, 1939, after war was declared but before Germany mounted its blitzkrieg offensive, observers were puzzled that Hitler was temporizing. They called it a Sitzkrieg, a sit-down war. Then, in the spring of 1940, the Nazis smashed through much of Europe in a matter of weeks. Excuse the analogy, but political observers, waiting for the full ferocity of Koch brothers money, have been puzzled that the Republicans have allowed Democrats to take back some 39 [...]

Donald Trump is imposing 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum. The unions, the bipartisan steel caucus in Congress, domestic steelmakers, and Trump’s nationalistic base were delighted. The usual suspects were appalled. And the stock market promptly plunged. The Wall Street Journal, working itself into a full lather, warned that this was perverse economics, since 6.5 million Americans work in steel-using industries while only 140,000 work in steel-making. So, how should we understand this? Are these tariffs [...]