Author Archives: jfrankel

Vaccination Mandates Are Not Government Over-reach

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January 28, 2022 — The US Supreme Court on January 13 blocked President Joe Biden’s attempt to mandate that businesses must require their employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or else wear masks and be tested regularly.  This “emergency standard” was to have been applied by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, carrying out its responsibility under long-standing legislation to protect workers facing serious danger in the workplace.

In some countries, governments have imposed vaccine mandates on their entire populations, or at least on all workers.  They include Austria, Ecuador, and Indonesia.  Germany is currently deciding on a mandate.  Many more, like Italy, have imposed the requirement on subsets of the population, such as health workers or those over 50. read more

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History Advises Biden to Match Signals with Actions in Ukraine

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December 24, 2021 — As Russian troops mass along the border with Ukraine, the White House has been calibrating its response. President Joe Biden has warned that in the event of an invasion, the US and allies would make Russian President Vladimir Putin pay a heavy price. Likely measures would particularly include economic sanctions such as a cut-off from the SWIFT payments system and turning off the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline.  Good. It is possible that such threats will deter Putin.

Biden has also said that he would not send military personnel.  Also, good, given that a threat to intervene militarily would be a bluff. Americans and Europeans are not in fact prepared to send troops to Ukraine. Even though the Russian invasion of a sovereign European country is a terrible thing, reminiscent of 1939, all perceive that Putin feels his country’s interests to be at stake in Ukraine more than Americans do. read more

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Inflation is Back, But the 1970s Aren’t

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November 29, 2021 — Are the US and other advanced countries experiencing stagflation?  Stagflation is the unfortunate combination of high inflation with low growth in output and employment that characterized the mid-1970s.  Are we back in that decade?

No.  At least not the US. What it is experiencing now is simply (moderate) inflation, without the stagnation part.  More like the 1960s than the 1970s.

It is true that the US headline CPI inflation rate reached 6.2 % over the 12 months to October, the highest since 1991.  Few are still forecasting an early return to 2 % , the Fed’s long-run target.  Inflation is also the highest in 10 years in the UK (4.2 %) and the EU (4.4 %), though it remains low in Japan.  12-month inflation is 4.1 % in the eurozone, the highest since a peak in July 2008.  (All these regions have lower – but still elevated — inflation rates if one uses the core measure, which takes out fast-rising food and energy prices. US core inflation is 4.6%.) read more

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