There is nothing normal about the 2020 recession. Massive nationwide shutdowns of "non-essential" businesses caused real GDP to drop at a 31.4% annual rate in the second quarter, the biggest drop since the 1930s. However, as we expected, a V-shaped recovery is being ...

When government forces businesses to close (even if it is for a pandemic), it’s a “taking” in the legal sense. And we can think about $3 trillion in federal bailout spending as “just compensation” to businesses and employees for that taking. Basically, we have decided to borrow from future generations in an attempt to stop a virus and save ...

The seeds of the current coronavirus economic contraction were sown during the subprime Panic of 2008. Back then, short sellers (and those who wanted to blame Wall Street) supported an accounting rule, “mark-to-market,” that caused market participants – and their accompanying liquidity – to flee for the exits. Instead of fixing that rule, ...

‘Austerity’ isn’t the problem. Eurozone governments are spending more now as a share of GDP than before the crisis. Global stock markets are falling, and most of the blame is placed on Europe. German factory orders fell 5.7% in August, real GDP is stagnant or falling in many European countries, Standard & Poor’s has downgraded France to AA ...

The digital scrip doesn't meet the requirements to be a real currency. In the 1930s, when the Federal Reserve let the money supply contract, there was a true shortage of currency. At least 150 communities experimented with scrip—printing their own money to grease the wheels of commerce. None worked, and all ...