The Economist (August 29)
“The background music of Donald Trump’s second term has been the sound of norms breaking. On economic policy alone, the president has used tariffs to usurp Congress’s taxing powers and launched attack after attack on the independence of the Federal Reserve, which he accuses of keeping interest rates too high.” While it may be “tempting to tune the noise out,” the Treasury’s recent intervention in bond markets “deserves to echo far and wide.” And “so long as government debt stays high,” more of these unconventional Treasury follies will probably ensue, but America will ultimately come to “regret Scott Bessent’s bond-market misadventures.”
Tags: Attack, Background, Bessent, Bond markets, Congress, Debt, Economic policy, Federal Reserve, Government, Independence, Interest rates, Intervention, Misadventures, Noise, Norms breaking, Regret, Tariffs, Taxing powers, Treasury, Trump, Unconventional, Usurp
Wall Street Journal (August 20)
“Mr. Modi’s plans to unleash market forces will lift millions of Indians out of poverty, but he also has ideas about how government can better meet the immediate needs of the poor.” Though some of his plans “may sound oddly simple to developed-world ears” (e.g. access to toilets and bank accounts), “the Prime Minister’s humble background gives him an understanding of what the poor need to find their own path to prosperity and the credibility to build a new consensus for those policies.”
Tags: Background, Bank accounts, Consensus, Credibility, Government, Humble, India, Modi, Policies, Poverty, Prosperity, Toilets
