MILAN, Italy (Project Syndicate) entCentral banks’ efforts to contain high and rising inflation are fueling headwinds to growth and are threatening to tip the global economy into recession. But the proximate cause of today’s inflationary pressures is a large, broad-based, and persistent imbalance between supply and demand. Higher interest rates will dampen demand, but supply-side…
President Joe Biden’s recent statement that the United States would intervene militarily if China tried to take Taiwan by force was hardly a gaffe. The US policy of strategic ambiguity has outlived its usefulness. Since President Richard Nixon went to China and put the two nations on the path to normalized diplomatic and trade relations,…
Read More “Opinion: Defending Taiwan starts with standing up to Putin” »
As prices rise, everywhere, for pretty much everything, the prospect of the human suffering this will cause is deeply worrying. There are predictions that the number of people in the world experiencing acute hunger — currently 276 million — could soon rise by as many as 47 million. To address the problem, one thing that…
Read More “Opinion: Rising prices: why the global drive to keep food cheap is unsustainable” »
WASHINGTON (Project Syndicate) nIn response to surging prices, President Joe Biden declared this month that “fighting inflation” is his “top economic priority.” He promises that his administration “will continue to do everything we can to lower prices for the American people.” Yet notwithstanding such statements of commitment, Biden has refused to lift the Trump administration’s…
President Biden’s recent letter to refiners to complain of high gasoline prices is the only positive action he can take on behalf of consumers. But it won’t keep the average price at the pump in the US from climbing another dollar by September and topping 6. Here’s why: shrinking US refining capacity even as oil…
Read More “Opinion: Gas prices are headed to 6 by Labor Day – here are the main reasons why” »
NEW YORK (Project Syndicate) – The United States appears to have entered a new cold war with both China and Russia. And US leaders’ portrayal of the confrontation as one between democracy and authoritarianism fails the smell test, especially at a time when the same leaders are actively courting a systematic human-rights abuser like Saudi…
Read More “Opinion: How an arrogant and pathological America could lose the new cold war” »
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will be challenged to get inflation down to 2% and keep it there. For the decade between the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID pandemic, inflation averaged less than the Fed’s target, but all the stars were aligned. That is hardly likely to happen again. Coming out of a severe…
Read More “Opinion: Inflation above 4% may become a fact of life” »
Talk of a potential deal that would let other OPEC + producers make up the crude supply gap left by Russia has put a lid on oil prices, but it would take much more to bring them down, analysts said. “Exempting Russia from the OPEC + output deal and allowing other producers such as Saudi…
