This morning, the Wall Street Journal issued a "bombshell" report about changes to the Fed's plans to "normalize" its balance sheet. The story, FMI contends, delivered far less than it promised.
 
The WSJ reported, in an overwrought and very run-on opening sentence, that “Federal Reserve officials are close to deciding they will maintain a larger portfolio of Treasury securities than they’d expected when they began shrinking those holdings two years ago, putting an end to the central bank’s portfolio wind-down closer into sight.”
 

I am sharing my new work on the struggle between the de facto government of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela, and the National Assembly, just recognized by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as the country's legitimate (de jure) government. 

This report originally appeared at CSIS' Web site.

The government shutdown has produced a serious economic threat that’s hiding in plain sight: The people who collect, analyze and release all the basic data tracking the path of the economy and its principal aspects are on furlough.  So, the shutdown has forced thousands of companies and financial institutions and millions of investors to rely on guesswork instead of data, and each week the problem grows worse.

Predicting the future is notoriously difficult, but that doesn’t stop the flurry of prognostications every January. We’ve gathered a selection of 2019 forecasts, including some predicting low probability events, because just imagining the unlikely can reveal horizons sometimes obstructed by conventional wisdom.

Like previous “year ahead” reviews I have published on EconVue, this is not intended as a prediction of how events will necessarily unfold in real life. Instead, as always my intent is above all to consider the main risks to the stability to the international political and economic environment in various regions of the world that I am relatively familiar with.

Europe

I am sharing with  you my new article examining trends and challenges facing Latin America and the Caribbean as we begin 2019.  The work focuses on the reinforcing effects of the fragmentation and other changes in the criminal groups across the region, the advance of the PRC, and deepening political crises in Guyana, Venezuela, Honduras, and Guatemala.  The article also highlights significant developments and challenges in Mexico and Colombia as countries of concern.

Co-wrote with Dr. Harold Picken, Huron Consulting.

Definitions of precision medicine are anything but precise. For seriously ill patients and their families, precision medicine therapies provide a hope when all else has failed. They’re willing to risk long odds for the chance to improve or extend life, but they want health insurers to cover the costs.

Has the “new Cold War” between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America began? Pessimists argue that the tough speech on China made by US Vice-President Mike Pence at the Hudson Institute on October 4, 2018 was the dangerous sign.

I know some people abhor social media.  The sector has certainly taken a beating lately in the markets, but I really love Twitter. It gives me the ability to hear the (curated) voices of people I know, don’t know, and in some cases hope I never know, but who make me think.  I follow the newspapers and journals I used to have to login to separately, read other media from all around the world I didn’t even know existed, and get into impromptu conversations with real experts. 

FMI’s commentary on the use of state & local incentives in the Amazon headquarters deals.

Amazon HQ Flawed But Still Good Deals for Winning States

When Socialist flavor-of-the-month Representative-elect Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and conservative Fox host Sean Hannity both denounce a policy as an outrage, it must be truly outrageous. Or they must both be very confused. In the case of the incentives given Amazon for its new headquarters, it is the latter.