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    Trump Is Flirting With Quack Economics

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    More than 30 years ago, the economists Rudiger Dornbusch (one of my mentors) and Sebastian Edwards wrote a classic paper on what they called “macroeconomic populism.” Their motivating examples were inflationary outbreaks under left-wing regimes in Latin America, but it seemed clear that the key issue wasn’t left-wing governance per se; it was, instead, what happens when governments engage in magical thinking. Indeed, even at the time they could have included the experience of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, which killed or “disappeared” thousands of leftists but also pursued irresponsible economic policies that led to a balance-of-payments crisis and soaring inflation.Modern examples of the syndrome include leftist governments like that of Venezuela, but also right-wing nationalist governments like that of Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who insisted that he could fight inflation by cutting interest rates.Will the United States be next?I wish people would stop calling Donald Trump a populist. He has, after all, never demonstrated any inclination to help working Americans, and his economic policies really didn’t help — his 2017 tax cut, in particular, was a giveaway to the wealthy. But his behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic showed that he’s as addicted to magical thinking and denial of reality as any petty strongman or dictator, which makes it all too likely that he might preside over the type of problems that result when policies are based on quack economics.Now, destructive economic policy isn’t the thing that alarms me the most about Trump’s potential return to power. Prospects for retaliation against his political opponents, huge detention camps for undocumented immigrants and more loom much larger in my mind. Still, it does seem worth noting that even as Republicans denounce President Biden for the inflation that occurred on his watch, Trump’s advisers have been floating policy ideas that could be far more inflationary than anything that has happened so far.It’s true that inflation surged in 2021 and 2022 before subsiding, and there’s a vigorous debate about how much of a role Biden’s economic policies played. I’m skeptical, among other things because inflation in the United States since the beginning of the Covid pandemic has closely tracked with that of other advanced economies. What’s notable, however, is what the Biden administration didn’t do when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to fight inflation. There was a clear risk that rate hikes would cause a politically disastrous recession, although this hasn’t happened so far. But Biden and company didn’t pressure the Fed to hold off; they respected the Fed’s independence, letting it do what it thought was necessary to bring inflation under control.Does anyone imagine that Trump — who in 2019 insisted that the Fed should cut interest rates to zero or below — would have exercised comparable restraint?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      March’s Hot Inflation Report is a Political Blow to Biden

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      The unexpected re-acceleration in price growth across the economy is at least a temporary setback for President Biden, who has been banking on cooling inflation to lift his re-election prospects.Mr. Biden and his aides have publicly cheered the retreat of annual inflation rates over the last year, after watching the fastest price growth in 40 years dent the president’s approval ratings earlier in his tenure.They have been anxious for inflation to fall even further, in order give relief to consumers and to potentially spur the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates — a move that would help to drive down borrowing costs for mortgages, car loans and other consumer credit. Mr. Biden has been particularly focused on home buyers, including young voters who are key to his electoral coalition, and who are struggling to afford high housing prices as mortgage rates remain around 7 percent.Wall Street analysts saw Wednesday’s surprise pickup in the inflation rate as a sign that the Fed could leave rates on hold for months longer than expected. That could mean no cuts before the November election, a campaign where Mr. Biden’s Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, has slammed Mr. Biden for both rapid price increases and high borrowing costs.The news comes as polls have begun to show Americans’ views of the economy slowly improving over recent months. Democratic pollsters have also pointed to recent surveys as a road map for how Mr. Biden should talk about inflation in the months to come: They suggest American voters blame corporate greed, more than government spending, for price increases. Mr. Biden has leaned into that message, including calling out companies in his State of the Union address for keeping prices high.He struck a similar tone on Wednesday in a statement that emphasized consumer frustration with inflation.“Prices are still too high for housing and groceries, even as prices for key household items, like milk and eggs, are lower than a year ago,” Mr. Biden said. “I have a plan to lower costs for housing — by building and renovating more than two million homes — and I’m calling on corporations, including grocery retailers, to use record profits to reduce prices.” More

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      Assessing Donald Trump’s Claims That He Would Have Done Better

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      The war in Ukraine. Hamas’s attack on Israel. Inflation. The former president has insisted that none would have occurred if he had remained in office after 2020.Aside from falsely insisting that he did not lose the 2020 election, former President Donald J. Trump has peddled a related set of theories centered on one question: What would the world have looked like had he stayed in office?Mr. Trump, in rallies and interviews, has repeatedly asserted — more than a dozen times since December, by one rough count — that three distinct events, both in the United States and abroad, are a product of the 2020 election.“There wouldn’t have been an attack on Israel. There wouldn’t have been an attack on Ukraine. And we wouldn’t have had any inflation,” he declared during a rally in January in Las Vegas. The next month in South Carolina, he baselessly claimed that Democrats had admitted as much.Politicians routinely entertain what-ifs, which are impossible to prove or rebut with certainty. But Mr. Trump’s suppositions underscore the ways in which he often airs questionable claims without explanation and which might not be supported by the broader context.And unlike simply attacking an opponent’s record or making a campaign promise, such alternative realities enjoy the benefit of being untestable.“People already grapple with how to hold elected officials accountable,” said Tabitha Bonilla, an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University who has researched campaign promises and accountability. “And what is super interesting here is that there’s no way to hold someone accountable at all, because there’s no way to measure any of this.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fed Chair Powell Signals a Retreat on Banking Rules

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      The Fed chair said regulators could scale back or rework a sweeping capital-requirements proposal that Wall Street has been fighting for months.Jay Powell, the Fed chair, stunned Wall Street yesterday with an apparent U-turn in bank regulation.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesJay Powell’s surprise For months, Wall Street C.E.O.s have been complaining bitterly and lobbying against the prospect of higher capital requirements, which would require them to keep more money on hand and would lower their profits. It appears they have scored a big win.Jay Powell dropped the bombshell in his testimony before the House on Wednesday. Markets were still digesting the Fed chair’s go-slow comments on interest rate cuts when he signaled that proposed new rules to force lenders to beef up their books would be scaled back, or reworked.“I do expect that there will be broad and material changes to the proposal,” he said.The capital rules, known as the “Basel III Endgame,” would apply to the largest banks. They would have to set aside a bigger emergency cushion to soak up losses stemming from shocks like the bank run last year that led to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and prompted a wider crisis.But the proposals have come under fire from bank chiefs, industry lobbyists, Republican lawmakers and even some liberal members of Congress, who fear that a mandate to set aside billions to fight the next potential crisis could feed another one.Critics fear that Basel III would crimp lending just as banks grapple with upheaval in commercial real estate. Lenders face a looming “maturity wall” of as much as $1.5 trillion in commercial real estate loans set to come over the next two years.That risk came into blaring focus during Powell’s testimony. The stock price of New York Community Bank, a Long Island-based lender with a mountain of souring real estate loans, plummeted on news it was seeking emergency funding. (More on that below.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fed Chair Powell Still Expects to Cut Rates This Year, but Not Yet

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      Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, said policymakers still expect to lower rates in 2024 — but the timing hinges on data.Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said on Wednesday that he thinks the central bank will begin to lower borrowing costs in 2024 but that policymakers still needed to gain “greater confidence” that inflation was conquered before making a move.“We believe that our policy rate is likely at its peak for this tightening cycle,” Mr. Powell said in remarks prepared for testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. “If the economy evolves broadly as expected, it will likely be appropriate to begin dialing back policy restraint at some point this year.”The Fed next meets on March 19-20, but few investors expect officials to lower interest rates at that gathering. Markets see the Fed’s June meeting as a more likely candidate for the first rate cut, and are betting that central bankers could lower borrowing costs three or four times by the end of the year.The Fed chair warned against cutting rates too early — before inflation is sufficiently snuffed out — noting that “reducing policy restraint too soon or too much could result in a reversal of progress we have seen in inflation and ultimately require even tighter policy.”He also acknowledged that there could be risks to waiting too long, adding that “reducing policy restraint too late or too little could unduly weaken economic activity and employment.”Mr. Powell and his colleagues are trying to strike a delicate balance as they figure out their next policy steps. Policymakers raised interest rates rapidly between March 2022 and July 2023, lifting them to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent, where they currently sit. That has made mortgages, business loans and other types of borrowing more expensive, helping to tap the brakes on an economy that otherwise retains substantial momentum.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inflation Fears Stalk Presidential Politics and the Markets

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      Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are set to grill Jay Powell, the Fed chair, about interest rates and the economy, topics that are top of mind for voters and investors alike.Jay Powell, the Fed chair, will begin two days of testimony on Capitol Hill with inflation a hot topic for voters and markets.Richard Drew/Associated PressInflationary pressure and presidential politics President Biden and Donald Trump dominated Super Tuesday, setting the stage for a rematch of the 2020 election. One topic that’s high on the agenda for voters: Inflation.That means all eyes will be on Jay Powell, as the Fed chair makes a two-day appearance on Capitol Hill this week, for any sign of what’s next on rate cuts.Inflation is kryptonite for any politician, and especially for Biden. Trump again pounded the president on high prices, an issue that’s lifting the Republican in polls even as a range of indicators show that the economy is performing strongly.(The White House is putting the blame on corporations that “try to rip off Americans.” Watch for that theme at Thursday’s State of the Union address.)Powell will appear before the House on Wednesday and before the Senate on Thursday. Data published in recent weeks shows that jobs are plentiful, wages are rising and consumers are still spending. Analysts have upgraded their economic forecasts, raising hopes that a soft landing is likely.But market pros see warning signs. Concerns remain that inflation will stick above the Fed’s 2 percent target, forcing the central bank to put the brakes on interest rate cuts that traders expect to begin in June. The futures market on Wednesday is forecasting three to four cuts this year — down from nearly seven just weeks ago — and the more cautious sentiment has helped drag the S&P 500 lower this week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rents Are Falling. So Why Isn’t That Showing Up in Inflation Data?

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      Pandemic disruptions may have muddled the measurement of home prices in government data. That could complicate the Fed’s course on interest rates.The Federal Reserve may have a housing problem. At the very least, it has a housing riddle.Overall inflation has eased substantially over the past year. But housing has proved a tenacious — and surprising — exception. The cost of shelter was up 6 percent in January from a year earlier, and rose faster on a monthly basis than in December, according to the Labor Department. That acceleration was a big reason for the pickup in overall consumer prices last month.The persistence of housing inflation poses a problem for Fed officials as they consider when to roll back interest rates. Housing is by far the biggest monthly expense for most families, which means it weighs heavily on inflation calculations. Unless housing costs cool, it will be hard for inflation as a whole to return sustainably to the central bank’s target of 2 percent.“If you want to know where inflation is going, you need to know where housing inflation is going,” said Mark Franceski, managing director at Zelman & Associates, a housing research firm. Housing inflation, he added, “is not slowing at the rate that we expected or anyone expected.”Those expectations were based on private-sector data from real estate websites like Zillow and Apartment List and other private companies showing that rents have barely been rising recently and have been falling outright in some markets.For home buyers, the combination of rising prices and high interest rates has made housing increasingly unaffordable. Many existing homeowners, on the other hand, have been partly insulated from rising prices because they have fixed-rate mortgages with payments that don’t change from month to month.Housing prices and mortgage rates don’t directly show up in inflation data, however. That’s because buying a home is an investment, not just a consumer purchase like groceries. Instead, inflation data is based on rents. And with private data showing rents moderating, economists have been looking for the slowdown to appear in the government’s data, as well.The Housing ConundrumHousing costs, as measured in the Consumer Price Index, are still rising faster than before the pandemic, even as overall inflation has eased.

      Source: Labor DepartmentBy The New York TimesA Wider GapAfter surging in 2021 and 2022, rent growth has moderated. But the slowdown has been more gradual for single-family homes than for apartments.

      Notes: Data is shown as a 12-month change in a three-month moving average. “Houses” include both attached and detached single-family homes.Source: ZillowBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Hot CPI Report Forces a Rethink of Chances of a Soft Landing

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      Worries of higher-for-longer interest rates have grown since Tuesday’s Consumer Price Index report.A hotter-than-expected inflation report has stoked new concerns that a “soft landing” may be out of reach.Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images“No landing” Markets are still on edge after Tuesday’s hot inflation report, as Wall Street suddenly and sharply discounted the odds of imminent interest rate cuts.It has also poured cold water on the belief among many investors that the U.S. economy will achieve a “soft landing.”Why so gloomy? The Consumer Price Index report, which came in above economists’ forecasts, is a stark reminder of the challenges that the Fed faces in bringing down inflation to its 2 percent target. Even after excluding volatile energy and food prices, inflation is holding roughly steady and is well above where the central bank feels comfortable.Shelter costs, including rents, also rose above expectations, and “supercore inflation,” a measure the Fed closely follows that includes common “services” expenditures — like haircuts and lawyer fees — rose 4.3 year-on-year, its highest level since May, according to Deutsche Bank data.Markets responded with a jolt. Investors dumped Treasury notes on Tuesday amid concerns that the Fed will keep borrowing costs higher for longer. That pushed the Russell 2000 down nearly 4 percent, its worst slide in 20 months. (That said, S&P 500 futures were rebounding slightly on Wednesday morning as dip-buyers returned, and Britain reported milder-than-expected inflation data that pushed up stocks in London.)The futures market on Wednesday is pricing in three to four interest rate cuts this year, down from the six to seven projected at the start of the year and all but silencing rate-cut bulls. Such predictions “made no sense in our view,” Mohit Kumar, an economist at Jefferies, wrote in a research note.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Latest CPI Report Is a Crucial Inflation Report Card

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      Investors and the White House will pore over the latest Consumer Price Index report for clues on prices — and potential interest rate cuts.Wall Street and the White House will be looking for inflation clues as they tune in to today’s Consumer Price Index report.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesInflation back in the spotlight An S&P 500 on a five-week winning streak. A growing economy. Solid wage gains. And growing consumer and business optimism. These are the ingredients for an emerging Goldilocks scenario for the U.S. economy.What would help complete that recipe? Cooling inflation, which would stoke investor hopes that the Fed would soon lower borrowing costs. (That said, Fed officials continue to warn that it’s still too early to talk rate cuts.)The prospects of that economic ideal will be tested on Tuesday with the release of fresh Consumer Price Index data.Here’s what to expect: Economists have forecast a headline C.P.I. reading of 2.9 percent for January on an annualized basis, its smallest gain since April 2021. Core C.P.I., which strips out food and fuel prices, is expected to come in at 3.7 percent on an annualized basis, down from 5.6 percent in January 2023 — strong progress, but well above the Fed’s 2 percent target.There are reasons for caution, however. The slowdown has been driven by goods disinflation and lower energy prices. But economists are closely monitoring how attacks by Houthi rebels on ship traffic in the Red Sea could affect commerce costs and push up oil prices.The cost of crude oil has climbed since the start of the year, though it remains well below the levels hit in the aftermath of the Hamas-led attacks Oct. 7.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More