If you ask a Trump supporter to name some of the president’s accomplishments, invariably one of the first responses you get is a booming stock market.
The thing is, a booming stock market is not a good economic indicator. Not in this day and age. Here’s why.
Continue reading “The Stock Market is Not Evidence of Trump’s Success”
August 4 is the blog’s birthday. Once a year, I permit myself to write a self-indulgent post about the state of the blog on or near the blog birthday. To date, I have maintained my promise to only do this once annually. I have no intention of regularly subjecting my readers to my banal self-reflections. Continue reading “5 Years of Blogging”
Many in the western press are oversimplifying the story about Venezuela, blaming its economic crisis more or less exclusively on the socialist policies of President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez. Government policy has contributed to the shape the crisis has taken, but there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. I want to try to tell a fuller story.
President Trump wants to convince North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un that if he keeps running his jaw, we might fight him:
Many in the press have been happy to jump all over this, acting like the two countries are on the brink of war. But while this sells newspapers and gets clicks, it disinforms the public. Here’s what I think is really going on.
Continue reading “Let’s Stop Pretending We Might Fight North Korea”
I wrote a piece on austerity for In the Long Run, a Cambridge blog. You can read it here:
http://inthelongrun.org/articles/article/the-siren-song-of-austerity-and-the-erosion-of-the-centre
Benjamin Studebaker 