The Atlantic (October Issue)
“Donald Trump is testing the institution of the presidency unlike any of his 43 predecessors.” Will he destroy the institution? That remains to be seen. “We have never had a president so ill-informed about the nature of his office, so openly mendacious, so self-destructive, or so brazen in his abusive attacks on the courts, the press, Congress…. Trump is a Frankenstein’s monster of past presidents’ worst attributes.”
Tags: Brazen, Frankenstein, Ill-informed, Institution, Mendacious, Presidency, Self-destructive, Trump
Financial Times (October 22)
“Hitherto it has been assumed that China, rather than western democracies, will face chronic problems of governance.” But China’s political system is not its Achilles heel. “Rather than dismiss the Chinese governing system as fragile and tenuous, we need to understand what has been…. an extraordinarily successful institution, one that the world will increasingly come to recognise it must learn from.”
Tags: Achilles heel, China, Democracies, Governance, Institution, Successful
Washington Post (September 19)
The massive economic power of the Federal Reserve again moved markets this week. “This much Fed power is not in the long-term interest of the U.S. economy, nor that of the world. We say this not because the Fed’s policies under Mr. Bernanke have been wrong. To the contrary, taking interest rates to zero was aggressive but appropriate in the face of an epic recession…. Yet the Fed’s huge role represents more responsibility for the economy than a single technocratic institution — or any one fallible, unelected official, even a dedicated, talented one such as Mr. Bernanke — should bear for too long.”
Tags: Aggressive, Ben Bernanke, Bernanke, Economy, Federal Reserve, Institution, Interest rates, Power, Recession, Responsibility, U.S.
