Archive: Economic and Financial Digest
July 29, 2021 | Economic and Financial Digest
A Calmer But Durable Recovery Ahead
The economy is coming off the second strongest growth rate since 1978 in the just completed quarter, and the powerful post-pandemic reopening boost is still unfolding. But the rapid reopening has brought with it a host of problems, highlighting the fact that the road to normalcy is unlikely to be smooth. Thanks to labor shortages […]
June 29, 2021 | Economic and Financial Digest
Don’t Fret. The Workers Will Come Back
Americans are as flexible as they are resilient, so it comes as no surprise that they are efficiently adapting to a post-pandemic world. For sure, the health crisis has not been entirely vanquished. Although more than 50 percent of the adult population has been fully inoculated, vaccine hesitancy, emerging variants and greater social interactions could […]
May 27, 2021 | Economic and Financial Digest
Focus On The Trend, Not The Noise
The economic environment is ripe for naïve and misguided narratives. Taken at face value, the latest reports on jobs, consumer prices and retail sales suggest that the U.S. is in the grips of a jobless recovery and a stalling economy that is weighed down by worrisome inflationary pressures. This assessment on the economy is not […]
April 30, 2021 | Economic and Financial Digest
A Jobs Boom is Near, But Not Full Employment
The well-telegraphed heat wave in economic activity is underway. Most key economic data for March exceeded expectations, punctuating a quarter that turned out to be considerably stronger than anyone predicted earlier in the period. Importantly, the mercury is poised to go higher in the second quarter, thanks to another round of government stimulus and the […]
March 31, 2021 | Economic and Financial Digest
A Looming Economic Heat Wave
Spring has sprung, and the season of hope is resonating throughout the economy. After suffering a 3.5 percent contraction in 2020 – the steepest since demobilization in 1946 – real GDP is poised to surge as much as 7 percent this year, which would rival the largest annual gains since World War II. The widely […]