This week, a podcast and a panel.  The March 2021 Hale Report podcast is my interview with Karen Petrou, discussing her new book, Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America. Just published, it is already the #1 book in its category on Amazon.

The outlines of a 21st century paradigm are becoming clear: a dialectic between centralization and decentralization. Although technology enables both, it makes large scale post-modern decentralization possible. Trust in institutions built over centuries allows centralization, but lack of trust, especially in media and information flows fosters an environment politically favorable to decentralization.

Maybe it’s the several feet of snow piling up on our deck that have soured my outlook on hospital pricing behaviors. Winter blizzards are one way nature reminds humans that life isn’t always the way we’d like it to be.

At the beginning of 2020, US healthcare showed every sign of continuing 2019’s wave of growth and consolidation. Soaring valuations and an influx of new investment capital bolstered the optimistic outlook.

By March, the reality of the global pandemic had set in. We knew that an unprecedented year was upon us.

Congressional Republicans who eagerly supported massive increases in the budget deficit under Donald Trump have been quick to resuscitate their deficit concerns so they can denounce President Joseph Biden’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan.” In the words of Florida Senator Rick Scott, the plan is just “massive spending … with no accountability.”

Lyric Hughes Hale, Editor-in-Chief of EconVue, is joined by Dr. William Overholt, Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Business, to discuss US-China relations in the new Biden Administration.

To listen to the podcast, please click here. (50 mins)

For a copy of the full transcript, please click here.

George Shultz’s brilliant career as a public servant, economist, Fortune 500 executive, dean of the University of Chicago’s business school and now Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University has helped shape the trajectory of America’s economic and foreign policy throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

It’s a great first step. The digitization campaign announced by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will both save money and improve performance. Now, as the details of the plan are being worked out, PM Suga needs to think much bigger. His plan should be expanded in three ways.

Firstly, it should not just apply to intra-government communications and citizens’ contacts with the government for taxes, health care, etc., but to the business world as well. That’s because greater, more effective use of ICT is one of the most powerful things a country can do to boost economic growth.