economic challenges

The stock market continues its massive dropoff as Joe Biden struggles for an answer; the Biden White House finally condemns protesters trying to intimidate Supreme Court justices…sort of; and we examine the new documentary about 2020 election fraud, 2000 Mules.

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“There is a chance that macroeconomic stimulus on a scale closer to World War II levels than normal recession levels will set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation,” wrote Larry Summers in February 2021. A year later, the debate still rages over the first part of that sentence — the extent to which the American Rescue Plan is responsible for rising prices. But the rest of it is no longer in question: We’re currently experiencing the worst inflationary crisis in decades.

Annual inflation was already at its highest rate in decades in January of this year. But there was still a hopeful story you could tell about 2022: As the Covid pandemic eased, spending patterns would normalize, supply chains would strengthen, the labor market would stabilize, and inflation would ease. Then the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent global commodity markets into a tailspin and energy prices to record highs. An Omicron wave hit China, leading to huge lockdowns affecting global supply chains. And while the Fed has responded with the first of many planned interest rate hikes, it looks as though the inflation picture is only going to get worse in the immediate future.

For over a year now, Summers — a former U.S. Treasury secretary and current Harvard economist — has been warning about the economy that we appear to be entering. So I invited him to the show to make his case and paint a picture of what he thinks comes next. We discuss why he thinks we’re almost certainly headed toward a recession, why he believes the Fed is engaged in “wishful and delusional thinking,” whether corporations are using this inflationary period as an excuse to goose profit margins, how to avoid a 1970s-style stagflation crisis, whether interest rates are the right tool to be addressing inflation in the first place, why he thinks much more immigration is one of the best tools we have to bring down prices in the long term and much more.

Mentioned:

Larry Summers’s Mar. 17 Op-Ed in The Washington Post

Book Recommendations:

The Best and The Brightest by David Halberstam

The Price of Peace by Zachary D. Carter

Slouching Towards Utopia by J. Bradford DeLong

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Andrea López-Cruzado; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Krystal and Saagar give pre-speech and post-speech coverage of Biden's State of the Union address with cohosts Kyle Kulinski and Marshall Kosloff to break it all down!!!

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Southwest Airlines caves on its vaccine mandate; Jen Psaki mocks Americans worried over the supply chain bottleneck; and the woke Left turns on Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood.

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China fires a hypersonic, low-orbit missile capable of striking the United States; Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg returns to inform us how useless he is; and Superman isn't about the "American way" anymore.

Check out Debunked. Where Ben Shapiro exposes leftist fallacies in 15 minutes or less. Watch the full season available only on The Daily Wire: utm.io/uc9er 

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The White House acknowledges there may be Christmas shortages as the economy stagnates; Nancy Pelosi chides the media for not selling her big spending package; and the feds go to war with Florida and Texas over vaccine mandates.

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The Biden administration’s first legislative priority is a $1.9 trillion economic rescue package. It’s the kind of mega-package where the individual policies contained inside it — a $15 minimum wage, $1,400 checks, a huge child tax credit expansion, a $50 billion virus testing infrastructure — would be big deals on their own. But together, this would be one of the most consequential packages ever passed.

So there’s a lot to talk about here. And who better to talk about it with than my now-colleague Paul Krugman? We dig into the details of the plan and then spiral off into some other topics I wanted to run by the nearest Nobel laureate: the major rethinking of debt and deficits among left-of-center economists, the differences between Keynesians and Modern Monetary Theorists, how Krugman made a bunch of money off Bitcoin (it’s not how you’d think!), why progressives need a better theory of technological change, Krugman’s favorite indie bands of the mid-2000s, and more.

Mentioned in this episode: 

“Notes on the Coronacoma (Wonkish)” by Paul Krugman

“Why Markets Boomed in a Year of Human Misery” by Neil Irwin and Weiyi Cai

“Who’s Afraid of Budget Deficits?” By Jason Furman and Lawrence Summers

“Public Debt: Fiscal and Welfare Costs in a Time of Low Interest Rates” by Olivier Blanchard

“America’s anti-democratic Senate, in one number” by Ian Millhiser

Book Recommendations: 

“Laundry Files” series by Charlie Stross

“Merchant Princes” series by Charlie Stross

“The Price of Peace” by Zachary Carter

Band Recommendations: 

The Be Good Tanyas

Larkin Poe

Reina del Cid

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rogé Karma and Jeff Geld; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld.

The Fed is facing historic challenges for two reasons. The first is the coronavirus and the task of facilitating the economic recovery. The second challenge is one that precedes the crisis, and it has to do with how the Fed operates generally as well as the limits of effective monetary policy. How can the Fed better achieve its goals? Can monetary policy spread the benefits of growth more broadly? How can it avoid snuffing out growth prematurely? On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, who is thinking about all of these things and more.

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"There's always a way if there's will." Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) discusses various obstacles that entrepreneurs may face during uncertain times and provides tips on how to overcome them. He emphasizes the importance of adapting to changes, developing a thick skin, and finding new ways to provide value to customers.

Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.

Timestamps:

(0:27) - Control what we can, like our health, amidst uncertainty

(1:18) - Develop thick skin, as high volume game

(2:31) - Some industries had supply and demand disappear overnight

(3:35) - Flip thinking, take advantage of remote fulfillment for higher margins

(6:11) - Best opportunity to quit, adopt "there's always a way" mindset

(9:30) - Lowering prices is an excuse, find a new problem to solve

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Sure, sex crimes are horrific, and the perpetrators deserve to be punished harshly. But society keeps exacting costs -- out-of-pocket and otherwise -- long after the prison sentence has been served.