We hope that you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. We went to New York to celebrate Turkey Day on Thursday and my 70th birthday on Friday – and a lot of Christmas shopping over the weekend. The start of the following week was dominated by the Global Interdependence Center’s second annual College of Central Bankers event – which started with a Chatham House Rules meeting with 13 former central bankers from all over the world discussing monetary policy and the slide toward less int

The first government data since the shutdown was released this week – and it reinforced our view that the US economy has downshifted to a lower level of actual and potential growth due to immigration reform. The run of anecdotes, company reports and foreign data also fall in line with our view that the US economy cannot have a recession without a deeper downturn elsewhere – as we can export our pain. The long-delayed August trade data showed a sharp reduction in US imports du

The government shutdown has ended – for now. The agreement to end the shutdown appears to have largely kicked the can down the road to January 30th – when a much longer stoppage may occur, setting up the political arena for the mid-terms. Why longer? Well, the factors that brought this episode to an end were primarily about paying the military, the Veterans Administration and air traffic controllers, and fully funding SNAP payments. A lack of cemetery maintenance ahead of ser