Policy and Government

John Tamny explains why your passion should become your job. Order your copy of ‘The End of Work’ by clicking here.

Director Kudlow calls the February jobs report ‘fluky.’

At the New York Times, David Leonhart recognizes that economic forecasters have been too optimistic for over 10 years and that cumulative growth of the GDP since 2007 is closer to 20% than the forecast 25+%, references secular stagnation, and recommends some conventional NeoKeynesian measures.

The Washington Post helpfully points out that Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke, if they enter the Democratic primary, would inject a crosscurrent of “centrism” into an otherwise largely left-leaning field.

Monetary

Steve Forbes: Sales of gold and silver should not be taxed.

The Economist notes that some estimable figures consider MMT nutty and moreover:

“Mainstream Keynesianism was tarnished in turn amid the inflation of the 1970s. The monetarism which then gained favour floundered a decade later, when central banks targeting money-supply growth discovered that the link between their targets and inflation had vanished. Keynesians regrouped and built “new Keynesian” models which became the workhorses of much recent analysis. They too have disappointed. In 2016 Olivier Blanchard, a former chief economist of the IMF, described the workhorses as “seriously flawed”, “based on unappealing assumptions”, and yielding implications that are “not convincing”. Paul Romer, a Nobel laureate last year, wrote in 2016 that “for more than three decades, macroeconomics has gone backwards”.

“MMT is not obviously a step forward. But if it wins political support and influences policy only to flop, that is hardly voodoo. It is macroeconomics as usual.”

60 Minutes interviews Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

Will the Fed need to lend Uncle Sam dough to fund the deficit?

Tax

On CNBC, Grover Norquist discusses the benefits of Trump’s tax bill.

World

Dan Mitchell: For China to prosper, they must ditch central planning.