author - oman observer

My latest column was about President Joe Biden’s remark that some Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare (and, indeed, all federal legislation) after five years, and the howls of...

China’s population declined last year, for the first time since the mass deaths associated with Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward in the 1960s. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say...

Credit where credit is due: Make America Great Again was a brilliant slogan, precisely because nobody knew what it meant. Was it about bringing back jobs in manufacturing? Was it about restoring...

If you don’t think of economists as party animals, you’re right. Or at least that’s the conclusion one might draw from the fact that several prominent economists carried on a thoughtful, earnest...

If you’re one of those people who bought bitcoin or another cryptocurrency near its peak last fall, you’ve lost a lot of money. Is it any consolation to know that you would have lost a similar...

The average national price of regular gasoline this Christmas was almost 20 cents a gallon lower than it was a year earlier. Prices at the pump are still higher than they were during the pandemic...

Some years ago — I think it was 2015 — I got a quick lesson in how easy it is to become a horrible person. I was a featured speaker at a conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and my arrival flight was...

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: We’re now engaged in a trade war.Actually, you probably haven’t heard this one before. I’m not talking about Donald Trump’s clumsy tariffs aimed at...

What does Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, understand that Vladimir Putin doesn’t?OK, I know that may sound like a trick question, or a desperate effort to offer a counterintuitive take...

Lately, I’ve been seeing what seems like a growing number of reports about Ukraine’s economic difficulties. And it definitely makes sense to focus more on the country’s economy now that the tide...

There’s something strange in the DC air these days. It smells a bit like... competence.Seriously, it has been amazing to watch the media narrative on the Biden administration change. Just a few...

In 1990 Congress passed an amendment to the Clean Air Act of 1970, among other things taking action against acid rain, urban smog and ozone.The legislation was highly successful, greatly reducing...

It has been a good week on the inflation front. First, we had a flat month for the consumer price index — zero inflation in July. Then we saw an actual decline in the producer price index.Naturally,...

They really did it. The Inflation Reduction Act, which is mainly a climate change bill with a side helping of health reform, passed the Senate on Sunday; by all accounts it will easily pass the House,...

Economic commentators always reach for historical analogies and with good reason.For example, those who had studied past banking crises had a much better grasp of what was happening in 2008 than those...

Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine was, above all a blunder. In less than five weeks, Putin has destroyed Russia’s military reputation, battered his country’s economy and strengthened the...

Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine has sent the prices of many commodities skyrocketing. And it is not just oil and gas. From a humanitarian point of view, the soaring price of food, especially...

When Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine, I think it’s fair to say that most observers expected him to get away with it. Surely Russia’s huge military would take Kyiv and other major cities within a...

Despite the astonishingly effective fight that Ukraine has put up against invading forces, most military experts seem to believe that Russia’s sheer advantage in firepower will eventually...

I have written about America’s surprising success in limiting the economic damage from Covid-19. Compared with expectations and compared with our handling of the 2008 financial crisis, we’ve done...