Tag: Stock Market

Trump’s First Year Was Really Quite Pedestrian

I’m no great fan of state of the union addresses (as long-time readers are sure to know). They are platitudinous affairs in which presidents tell a long series of anecdotes about particular people they claim their policies have helped. The responses from the opposition are no better, full of vague rhetoric that sounds as if it were recycled from old 90s stump speeches. I won’t review all this nonsense–it’s a waste of your time and mine. But I will offer you my review of Donald Trump’s first year. It’s a review focused on what the president has done, not on what he’s said. My interest is in large-scale policy that affects real people–not in scandals and tweets. If that still sounds interesting to you, come along for the ride.

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The Stock Market Crash: What China and the US are Doing Wrong

Stock markets have been stumbling this week. To some degree, this is happening because corrections are needed, but one of the key reasons these corrections are happening right now is China. China’s stock market has been in a tailspin lately, and the Chinese government has taken a series of measures to prop up its stock market, all of which are only succeeding in making the situation much worse. Right wing commentators in the west are pointing at China and claiming that government intervention in the economy doesn’t work. This is a simplistic and reductive response–the problem is not that China is taking action, but that the specific actions that China is taking are the wrong actions.

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The 3 Ways Governments Raise Money Part I: Taxation

One of the things I’ve noticed lately is that there is a lot of confusion about how governments finance themselves. Many people try to make sense of the state’s finances by extrapolating from their own experiences with household budgets or running businesses. This leads to a lot of misconceptions, the most prominent of which is the idea that whenever governments borrow money, they must be acting irresponsibly. So I’m embarking on a 3-part series that I hope will clear things up for some people.

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