Blog Post

Congress is expected any day now to pass a really awful tax bill. If you want to understand why economists are confident that the tax cuts will not pay for themselves and why Republicans are disingenuous to claim otherwise, I recommend what Jason Furman and Larry Summers have been writing, e.g. in this column in the Washington post.

The Republicans, it is said, absolutely must pass a massive tax bill by Christmas, in order to have some major accomplishment to show for 2017, the first year in which they control all branches of government. Having apparently failed in their seven-year campaign to deprive some 20 million Americans of health insurance, they dare not fail in their Scrooge-like campaign to transfer billions of dollars to the ultra-rich.

Elected at an age when most French politicians are still building their careers, either in government or in their local constituencies, Macron saw an opportunity to step in at a time when the electorate appeared especially disillusioned. 

One might find the motto of the newly elected reformist mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Ali Najafi, surprising and inconsistent with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) political project. Or, conversely, one might interpret it, along with the victory of many reformist candidates in the 2017 local council elections, as a sign of the regime’s opening. Yet, this binary undermines the “complexity of the Iranian puzzle” and is reductive of domestic political processes that have shaped competitive Iranian factionalist politics since 1979.

As the world’s largest nuclear facilities operators, U.S. corporations understand all aspects of nuclear programs. Employing those same corporations to partner and collaborate with Iran on nuclear projects would be a major confidence-building step that would secure trust between the two sides after the sunset provisions of the deal expire. The people of Iran and the United States have never been enemies. Now is the time to seek a legitimate business-based compromise that can allow the United States and Iran to fully execute the JCPOA in full compliance with both the substance and intent of each of the deal’s signatories while pursing the long-term goal of eliminating the growth and proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear terrorism. To this end, Iran and the US can in parallel collaborate on eliminating the risk of proliferation in the region and establishing a Middle East free from all weapons of mass destruction.

There has been speculation that after Trump picks one of the five candidates to be chair of the Federal Reserve (with Jay Powell now apparently the front-runner), he could pick another one of them to be Vice-chair.  This latter position is the one that, sadly, Stanley Fischer is now vacating.

In a volatile Middle East rich in tensions and yet rather poor in successful conflict-management, the JCPOA is a landmark achievement of multilateral diplomacy that contributes to regional peace and security. So far, the U.S. has been unsuccessful in enlisting international support for its current bid to re-negotiate the JCPOA, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has recently hinted at the possibility of a "second agreement."  Hypothetically speaking, a ‘JCPOA II’, while leaving the JCPOA intact, is [...] within the realm of possibilities; however, it requires a great deal of U.S. "smart diplomacy" to flesh out the details such as the relevant parameters and enroll the other (hitherto recalcitrant) powers that are parties to the JCPOA. 

The Trump Administration has said it will announce its choice for the new Chair of the Federal Reserve Board by November 3. Subject to Senate confirmation, the chosen candidate will succeed Janet Yellen, whose term ends February 3.

The White House has said it views five candidates as front runners. Two are eminent economists with unusually impressive records — both in academic research, mostly at West Coast universities, and as practitioners of macroeconomic policy. That would be Yellen herself, who is a strong candidate for reappointment, and Stanford’s John Taylor. The other three front-runners are not professionally trained as economists, but rather come from financial backgrounds: Gary Cohn, Jerome Powell, and Kevin Warsh. They worked, respectively, for Goldman Sachs, Dillon Read, and Morgan Stanley; all three also have important government experience.