The summer of strikes has extended into fall and is battering the U.S. economy with a ripple effect impacting productivity, spending and hiring while many economists fear a recession. Strikes by the entertainment industry and the United Auto Workers have triggered an estimated $10 billion in economic losses. Some analysts say those numbers underestimate the damage because measuring the full impact of a work stoppage is nearly impossible.   Strikes have far-reaching consequences that hurt the nation’s total output, corporate sales, consumer spending, employment and businesses that depend on workers for sales, products and supplies.   “If you add up all these…

Shares in Dutch lenders fell on Friday after the country became the latest in Europe to propose more punitive taxes on banks to help citizens cope with a rise in living costs. The country’s biggest bank by assets, ING, suffered a 5 per cent fall in early trading on Friday, while ABN Amro’s shares dropped 4 per cent. Late on Thursday night, a majority of Dutch politicians voted in favour of a raft of tax proposals to support an increase in the minimum wage and childcare support in 2024. One of the measures was a 70 per cent increase in…

Both Washington and Beijing treat rising debt as a consequence of irresponsible behavior by local institutions. But in China and the United States, rising debt is spurred by policies that have encouraged distortions in the distribution of domestic income. Until these distortions are addressed, both countries must choose between rising debt and rising unemployment. The urgent debate earlier this year about the establishment of a binding debt ceiling for the U.S. government implicitly (and sometimes quite explicitly) assumed that rising debt is a measure of Washington’s profligacy, and that if only policymakers were a little more frugal or a little…

Until recently, I assumed that Joe Biden would get a second term despite worries about his age because most Americans find Trump so loathsome. But I’ve underestimated Bidenomics. It’s turning out to be the most successful set of economic policies the United States has witnessed in a half-century. It will not only give Joe another term but will also give Democrats control over both houses of Congress. It may even put the nation on the path to widely-shared prosperity for a generation. Consider what’s been happening to the economy. New economic data last week showed inflation cooled to 3 percent in June,…

In 2023, amid Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has also shifted its focus from the battlefield to the economy. The numerous legislative activities around Western assets are clear evidence of this. A series of court decisions in Europe freezing Russian assets has prompted the Russian leadership to prepare for an escalation by establishing a legal framework for the nationalisation of foreign assets in Russia. This precarious situation has placed multibillion-dollar endeavours, which required years of arduous labour, in a state of uncertainty, as the Russian government contemplates a customised approach for each foreign investor. In a move widely…