What’s Going On with the Stock Market — And Can Trump Fix It?

Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its largest single-day point decline in history after tumbling 1,175 points. Compounding concerns, this sell-off occurred immediately after another large sell-off the previous trading day (Friday) where the Dow shed 666 points. Although the forces behind these changes are, of course, complex, here are the cliff notes on what is driving this market correction. As USA Today reported, “Fears of spiking inflation and borrowing costs caused investors to rethink their bullish views on stocks, which until just last week had fueled huge gains in the blue-chip Dow… [The market] fears and worries that

The Most Troubling Number from the Latest GDP Report: “2.8%”

Last week, the Commerce Department released a preliminary estimate showing the U.S. economy grew at 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017. This 2.6 percent expansion came as somewhat of a disappointment to economists, who anticipated a “hat trick” of 3 consecutive quarters of 3-plus percent growth, as well as to the New York Fed, which predicted the economy would grow around 4 percent. But while the final quarter of 2017 fell a bit short of expectations, overall the U.S. economic picture remains positive heading into 2018. With President Trump’s tax cuts now in effect, good news has been

Good News, America! Tax Cuts Could Be Coming Soon

Last week, the odds of achieving pro-growth tax cuts in 2017 took an important step forward when Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin expressed his desire for tax reform to be retroactive. As I previously wrote, “retroactivity” is the question of whether tax cuts should be back-dated to January of this year in order to include income already earned this tax season. Retroactivity is a critical, yet overlooked, facet of tax reform that was in urgent need of a champion inside the “Big 6” architects of tax reform. Secretary Mnuchin came out in support of retroactivity on CNBC, stating that backdating tax

Media Madness! Ranking the Worst #FakeNews Stories of 2017

While March is normally the month reserved for madness here in the U.S., since the election of Donald Trump last November, the mainstream media has made losing one’s sanity seem like a year-round occurrence. Journalists have been plagued by an inability to discern fact from fiction when reporting on the new president and his administration, the result being a whole collection of laughable #FakeNews stories which have been debunked over and over again. So which #FakeNews story has been the worst? In keeping with a venerable March tradition, we’ve decided to hold a competition. Below are 8 stories run by

Congratulations Mnuchin, Now Bring on the Tax Cuts!

This week the Senate confirmed Steve Mnuchin to serve as the next Treasury Secretary, and the message to struggling American families couldn’t be any clearer — help is on the way. Contrary to Slate economics correspondent Jordan Weissmann’s assertion that President Trump “inherited a reasonably strong economy” and “has started off his term in office on the economic equivalent of the bunny slope,” to Americans outside of the liberal blogosphere, it’s obvious that President Trump inherited an economy that is perilously slow. Of course, when Slate produces economic analysis, they’re not sending us their best, they’re sending us analysis with