Trump’s Taylor Rule

Share Button

Co-authored with Sohaib Nasim

July 31, 2025 — Donald Trump has now gone beyond his usual norm-busting habits in his criticism of Federal Reserve Board Chair Jay Powell.  He has harassed him to cut interest rates by 300 basis points, has heaped abuse upon Powell personally, has trumped up accusations regarding the remodeling of the Fed’s building, and has gone so far as to draft a letter to fire him.   (That is, to remove him from the chairmanship.  Even Trump must realize that he doesn’t have the legal power to remove Powell from the Federal Reserve Board altogether.) read more

Share Button

Did you believe Trump would not enter wars in Mideast?

Share Button

June 26, 2025 — Many people believed candidate Trump when he swore to avoid military entanglement.   In my January blog post,  at inauguration time, I wrote these two sentences, as a supposed lookback from the end of Trump’s 1st year:

“Pundits were soon chastising each other for having taken Trump’s isolationist foreign policy to imply a renunciation of military intervention abroad.  They suddenly remembered George W. Bush’s reversal, early in his presidency, of the very high bar that candidate Bush had set for military interventions, when rejecting nation-building in October 2000.” read more

Share Button

Foreign aid looks good, now that it’s gone

Share Button

May 24, 2025 — Joni Mitchell sang, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”   She was lamenting loss of the environment.  Aid to developing countries (Overseas Development Assistance) may now be in the same category.

  1. How much does the US spend?

For the last 80 years, Americans have spent more on humanitarian assistance, economic development programs, and other foreign aid than any other country: $72 billion by the US government in 2024, and more by private NGOs. read more

Share Button