Overzealously fighting inflation to help lower-income workers might actually do the opposite.The central economic debate in the United States right now is how aggressive the Federal Reserve should be in its effort to reduce inflation. Few economists are arguing against the…
Do you remember when Covid was going to establish China as the world’s dominant power? As late as mid-2021, my inbox was full of assertions that China’s apparent success in containing the coronavirus showed the superiority of the Chinese system over…
I have to admit: It has been fascinating to see Elon Musk tweeting his way ever deeper into a hole. It’s like watching a car crash — an electric, self-driving-car crash.Nor is this just about Twitter. I’m not a marketing expert,…
If you aren’t feeling a sense of dread on the eve of the midterm elections, you haven’t been paying attention.We can talk about the conventional stakes of these elections — their implications for economic policy, major social programs, environmental policy, civil…
My Thursday column is about the assault on Medicare and Social Security that is almost certain to follow if Republicans prevail on Tuesday. If the G.O.P. wins control of Congress, we can expect it to hold the economy hostage, most obviously…
The Times recently reported that Republicans, anticipating possible victory in the midterms, are embracing plans to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits — even though such cuts would be incredibly unpopular and would make nonsense of the G.O.P.’s attempts to portray…
You know you’re a serious economics nerd when you’re waiting on pins and needles for the latest JOLTS — Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey — results. Well, I am and I was. As it turned out, there wasn’t much news…
As we approach the midterm elections, most political coverage I see frames the contest as a struggle between Republicans taking advantage of a bad economy and Democrats trying to scare voters about the G.O.P.’s regressive social agenda. Voters do, indeed, perceive…
The basic story of U.S. economic policy right now is all about the Federal Reserve, which is trying to bring inflation down by raising interest rates, which should cool off the economy.The Fed’s actions have, in fact, been successful in producing…
Few things I’ve written in recent years have generated as much hate mail as a relatively low-key, somewhat nerdy newsletter I put out just before the release of data on gross domestic product for the second quarter of 2022. In that…
New York City’s subway system has been in the news a lot lately, and not in a good way. There have been several cases of violent assault, including people being pushed onto the tracks, and the number of murders in the…
During last week’s Oklahoma gubernatorial debate Joy Hofmeister, the surprisingly competitive Democratic candidate, addressed Kevin Stitt, the Republican incumbent, who — like many in his party — is running as a champion of law and order.“The fact is the rates of…
The hard-right turn of rural America has become a key factor in our nation’s troubled politics. Rural voters are a declining share of the electorate, but their turn to the MAGAfied Republican Party has been so sharp that, combined with the…
Will the price of gasoline — a price that has very little to do with which party controls the government — nonetheless determine the outcome of the midterm elections, and quite possibly the fate of American democracy?I wish that were a…
Liz Truss, Britain’s newish prime minister, has fallen from grace faster than any leader I can think of. According to a poll released Monday, she has only 9 percent approval among British voters — a performance that would probably be impossible…
Nobody knows for sure what will happen in the midterm elections. But if Republicans take one or both houses of Congress, the most important question will be one that is getting hardly any public attention: What will the Biden administration do…
The big economic news of the week was, of course, Thursday’s report on consumer prices. And there’s no way to spin that report: It was ugly. There has been a lot of buzz from private-sector observers to the effect that inflation…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: We’re now engaged in a trade war with China.Actually, you probably haven’t heard this one before. I’m not talking about Donald Trump’s clumsy tariffs aimed at reducing America’s trade deficit. I’m talking instead…
Do people still read Rudyard Kipling’s “If”? Even if you haven’t, you probably know how it begins: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …” Refusing to panic, Kipling asserted, was a great virtue.But during…
For as long as I’ve been paying attention to economic news, pundits and investors have waited anxiously for the monthly report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the employment situation. That’s still true, and there was some important news in…
Meteorologists tell us that global warming has created new problems for forecasters. Not only are hurricanes getting stronger, they’re also intensifying more rapidly than they used to, making it difficult to issue early warnings for communities in their path. Notably, officials…
From a financial point of view, 2022 has, above all, been the year of rising interest rates. True, the Federal Reserve didn’t begin raising the short-term interest rates it controls until March, and its counterparts abroad acted even later. But long-term…
Liz Truss, who became Britain’s prime minister less than a month ago, may have set a political speed record. She certainly isn’t the first leader who has been forced to make a policy U-turn in the face of adverse market reactions.…
When you’re telling stories about the economy, housing almost always looms large. It plays a huge role in the economy’s ups and downs: A burst housing bubble was the prime mover in the Great Recession of 2007-9, and the Federal Reserve’s…
If you’ve ever found yourself driving in stop-and-go traffic, you know that there’s a strong temptation to overreact to changes in the flow. When the cars in front of you finally start moving, you floor the gas pedal, then you slam…
You're reading the Paul Krugman newsletter, for Times subscribers only. A guide to U.S. politics and the economy — from the mainstream to the wonkish. Financial markets usually give wealthy, politically stable nations a lot of fiscal space. In particular, a country…
What’s my plan for the next two years? I will be happy, healthy and successful. What will I do to achieve these things? What are you, a Marxist?I’ve now summarized the essence of the Commitment to America announced by House Republicans…
Britain is in a very difficult economic position. The British economy, like the U.S. economy, seems to be seriously overheated, with substantial amounts of inflation driven by high domestic demand. Unlike America, it is also facing the full force of Europe’s…
What does Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, understand that Vladimir Putin doesn’t?OK, I know that may sound like a trick question, or a desperate effort to offer a counterintuitive take on recent events. We may say that the Fed…
Lately I’ve been seeing what seems like a growing number of reports about Ukraine’s economic difficulties. And it definitely makes sense to focus more on the country’s economy now that the tide seems to have turned in Ukraine’s favor on the…
Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times; images by ilbusca and Kypros via Getty ImagesThree important reports on inflation were released this week. On Monday the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released its latest survey on inflation expectations, which was…
Back when inflation was first taking off in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Arthur Okun — an economist who served John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson — suggested a quick-and-dirty measure of the state of the economy. His Economic Discomfort…
On Aug. 29 Tucker Carlson of Fox News attacked President Biden’s policy on Ukraine, asserting among other things: “By any actual reality-based measure, Vladimir Putin is not losing the war in Ukraine. He is winning the war in Ukraine.” Carlson went…
In 1971, John Connally, Richard Nixon’s treasury secretary, told his counterparts from other major economies that “the dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem.” The context — the lingering demise of the Bretton Woods currency system — is ancient history.…
The West isn’t exactly at war with Russia. However, it isn’t exactly not at war, either. Western weapons have helped Ukraine to stall Russia’s invasion and even to counterattack, while Western economic sanctions have clearly created serious problems for Russian industry.Russia…
Remember the Trump trade wars? Actually, many of the tariffs Donald Trump imposed are still in place — less, I suspect, because Joe Biden thinks they were justified than because giving Republicans an excuse to accuse his administration of being soft…
President Biden has presided over a huge employment boom that, according to Friday’s employment report, is still in progress. That’s simply a fact, although stating it (like pointing out that we aren’t in a recession at the moment) guarantees that I…
Most articles on the death of Mikhail Gorbachev dwell on the political failure of his reform project. The Russian Federation, the main successor state to the Soviet Union, has not, to say the least, become a democratic, open society. Ukraine may…
Mississippi has long been America’s poorest state, with real gross domestic product per person only about 60 percent of the national average. The United States, however, is a rich country, so Mississippi doesn’t look that bad by international standards. Specifically, it’s…
You probably have to be a senior citizen to remember the gasoline shortages of 1979. I am, and I do. I also remember how demoralizing they were. Then as now, outside a few big cities, America was a highly car-dependent nation,…