Growth
Will the Fed Be Too Late?
We started banging the drum on inflation early this year; over the course of the year, more analysts and observers began to join us in identifying the rising risk of more troublesome and persistent inflation. By late summer, the consensus had firmly shifted to the “persistent” camp, but the Federal Read more…
Automation
Pandemic Dividends: Growth Driven By Digitization (and the Beneficiaries)
The extraordinary pandemic support measures enacted last year by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury were a critical component of the U.S.’ so-far successful navigation of pandemic disruption. Still, those support measures would have had little to work with if the U.S. economy had not already undergone substantial digitization in Read more…
Debt
Entitlements and Economic Growth
Electorates, Be Careful What You Wish For The chaotic wake of the pandemic and the ever-more-bitter partisan spirit that has taken hold in Washington has made the neutral examination of policy proposals increasingly difficult for analysts. Yet it remains a particularly critical exercise to contextualize the nearer-term dynamics of the Read more…
Growth
The Boom Arrives on Main Street
As we noted last week, we believe that as 2021 progresses, we will have a drumbeat of increasing analyst expectations for GDP growth and economic activity. The past year’s pandemic-driven economic gyrations have been so severe that economists and macro strategists — who as a group are not the most Read more…
Growth
What Could Derail The Economic Train? Watch Out For A Tax Policy Accident
A trend has emerged: the research departments of the big brokerage houses are gradually increasing their estimates for U.S. GDP growth in 2021. Last week, Bank of America raised its full-year target from 6.5% to 7%. Although Goldman Sachs has kept its full-year target at 7.5%, this week it pulled Read more…
Election
Market Swipes Left On Higher Taxes
The news cycle is still partly occupied with COVID-related coverage, and thus the markets will likely still respond to reports of rising cases, and advances and setbacks in vaccine trials. (We note that daily deaths are declining again in the U.S., and in some European countries have fallen to single Read more…
China
Chinese Economic Growth: COVID-19 and the Long Picture
Although the news is focused on the human drama of COVID-19 — with quarantines, heroism, tragedy, and fear — economists and financial analysts are busy working through different scenarios for the impact that the epidemic will have on economic activity and economic growth, both in the most affected countries and Read more…
Employment
Questions And Worries For 2020 — And Our Answers
Markets in 2019 truly climbed a wall of worry, recovering from the late 2018 swoon and rising to new highs even in the midst of a host of political, geopolitical, financial, and economic concerns. Some of those worries have been resolved, some have been put to one side, others are Read more…
Energy
Utilities As Growth Companies
Electric power generation in the United States is a highly regulated industry, and has been since the 1920s and 1930s. The primary Federal entity regulating the production and transmission of electricity is FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but FERC’s regulation is high-level. The nitty gritty of pricing regulation that Read more…
