Tag: Unemployment benefits
The End of German Exceptionalism
Asked what came to her mind when thinking about Germany, former Chancellor Angela Merkel once said, “I think of airtight windows. No other country can build as airtight and as beautiful windows.”
With its history tainted, post-1945 Germany looked to its economy for a positive conception of itself. The goods Germany produced, such as those quality windows, allowed politicians to celebrate the country as an “export world champion.” Germany Inc., was a well-oiled capitalist-corporatist ensemble. Trade-union leaders and CEOs
Why So Many COVID Predictions Were Wrong
Updated at 12:13 p.m. ET on April 7, 2022.
As many prominent policy makers reckon uncomfortably with persistent inflation after months of forecasting that the phenomenon would be transitory, I’ve started making a list of other pandemic predictions about the economy that never materialized. There was the eviction tsunami and the “she-cession” and the housing-market crash, and you can’t forget the state- and local-government deficit explosion. In each case, expectations set by economists, policy makers, advocates, and businesses have