WASHINGTON — Among the world’s major economies, America’s is “the least ugly,” as Adam Posen, head of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, puts it. So it is. The American economy is plodding along at about a 2 percent annual growth rate, which is much slower than most past periods, but compared with most other […]

WASHINGTON — Woe is Brazil. As the summer Olympics approach in August, Latin America’s largest country — with a population of 206 million and an economy that is 40 percent of the region’s total — is caught in a harsh slump and faces a political crisis that could result in its president being impeached. How […]

WASHINGTON — A paradox of our time concerns productivity. We are awash in transformative technologies — smartphones, tablets, big data — and yet the growth in labor productivity, which should benefit from all the technology, is dismal. This matters. Productivity is economic lingo for efficiency, and it’s the wellspring of higher living standards. If productivity […]

WASHINGTON — It’s a big story that has stayed beneath the radar of most American media. Somehow, cyber criminals stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank (its Federal Reserve). The theft surely qualifies as one of the biggest cyber heists ever. It’s also a reminder that the world’s financial systems remain vulnerable to cyberattacks from […]

WASHINGTON — In this bitter campaign, one area of agreement unites the major candidates: trade. Bernie Sanders brags that he’s opposed all recent trade agreements; Hillary Clinton now rejects the Trans-Pacific Partnership, President Obama’s signature trade success that she once supported; and Donald Trump blames incompetent U.S. trade negotiators for devastating job losses to China […]

WASHINGTON — Surprise: America’s discouraged workers are finding jobs — or so it seems. Unanticipated by many economists, this is good news for the country (and, assuming it continues, probably for Democrats this fall). Ever since the Great Recession, economists have worried that the severity and length of the slump would forever consign many workers […]

WASHINGTON — Is the American economy stronger than we think? Perhaps. A persisting puzzle about its recent performance is the stark contrast between growth of jobs (which has been unexpectedly robust) and the growth of the economy’s output (which has been unexpectedly weak). How could a struggling economy produce so many jobs? The puzzle would […]