Macro Economics June 21, 2024June 20, 2024 Paul London in The Hill: History Tells Us the Danger the Economy Faces Is Recession, Not Inflation U.S. economic history warns that raising the cost of public and private borrowing increases the danger of recession. In 2024, this risk far outweighs the risk of renewed inflation. Geopolitical challenges from Russia, China and Iran, and today’s fast-changing, disruptive, tech-driven economy instead require more and less costly credit and spending to promote the expansion and modernization of defense industries and civilian economic transformation. Worth reading in full. As is: Ian Simmons in Forbes: Why Extending Trump’s Tax Cuts Should Concern Long-Term Investors . . . That Trump wants to extend his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act should come as no surprise. . . . [But the TCJA dramatically increased the national debt and was arguably a senseless giveaway to foreign investors, a topic I wrote about in March. Another one of the law’s troubling elements was a new deduction for owners of so-called pass-through businesses. The provision was 50 times more likely to help the top 1% of earners . . . than those in the bottom 50% . . . . . . Tax cuts for billionaires are a bad deal for the vast majority of investors. R.I.P. EDWARD RYAN Ralph M.: “Thank you for posting this. It reminded me of a moment early in the 2004 Presidential race. Howard Dean was campaigning in Iowa in what looked like a middle school cafeteria. An older woman in the back got the mike and expressed her displeasure over Vermont’s Civil Union law. His answer (paraphrased from memory): I understand your concern. I grew up in a conventional family and a culture that was not comfortable with homosexuality and I was no different. But as Governor, I was confronted by people who said that if civil marriage conveyed certain benefits and privileges then those same benefits and privileges should be available to anyone — no matter whom they loved. At a campaign rally, an older gentleman came up to me and said, “I was on the beaches of Normandy, and I think I earned the right to love whoever I love.” “Howard Dean won my vote that night and, more importantly, he may have won the vote of the woman questioner.” Diane D.: “I’ll always believe that love wins out; but it is often a small, quiet win. R.I.P. Edward Ryan — may you and Paul have the life in the afterlife that you should have been able to have here.”