Pulse


How to Raise Incomes and Delay the Next Recession

Last October, mulling over the economic environment the next President would face, I sent Hillary Clinton memos on how she should provide some stimulus to sustain the current expansion and raise incomes by boosting business investment and productivity. Alas, she did not become President; but that didn’t change our current economic challenges. To be sure, President Trump’s manifold troubles may preclude Congress from doing anything meaningful until after the 2018 elections. But if that’s not the case, here’s some advice for both sides.

Digital Feds

"Digital currency is inevitable," I told a federal reserve researcher recently.

"You mean fiat currency? Issued by the Fed?" She was a bit taken aback by my certainty.

"Yes, it's inevitable. I'm not saying when or how or what, but that's where the market is moving."

Symbiotic Disruption: Skilled-Nursing-REIT Ecosystem Adapts to Market Dynamics

Co-authored with Wyatt Ritchie, a senior banker focusing on Post-Acute Care and Outsourced Services.  

Nature thrives on symbiosis. Its many ecosystems would not exist without important relationships between sometimes strange bedfellows. The oceans’ most colorful coral reefs, for example, are often found in clear water relatively devoid of nutrients.

Strategic Insights: Caribbean Security Issues

This report was originally published by the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

INTRODUCTION

Outside of military, law enforcement, and some academic circles, security issues are rarely part of the discourse about the Caribbean. Yet, during the Cold War, the region’s contiguity with the United States made its largest island, Cuba, the focal point of the world’s closest publicly known approximation to nuclear war.

Digital Fuel

It's data. As The Economist newspaper put it in last week's briefing, "data are to this century what oil was to the last one: a driver of growth and change."

EconVue Spotlight

Last year at this time, I was attending the G7 finance meetings in Sendai, Japan.  Sadly I missed this year’s event in Italy, but Angus Deaton's interview for Bloomberg today after his lecture in Bari makes me hope that the G7 ministers listened to him. Deaton's key points:

The Evolution of Transnational Organized Crime in Peru

This report was originally published in Latin America Goes Global, May 4, 2017.

In March 2017, Carmen Masais, head of Peru’s counterdrug organization DEVIDA, reported that the nation had 55,000 hectares of coca under cultivation, an amount higher than that estimated by the U.S., and more than 36% greater than that calculated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Regulatory Riddles

Financial regulators leave a lot to speculation in their public speeches. They leave clues and indicators but, knowing market participants are eager for early policy indications, they are careful not to say much.

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