Новости за 21.09.2020

On August 6, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders declaring that the popular apps TikTok and WeChat “threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” Last week, the Trump administration promised to make good on its threats, with downloads of both apps scheduled to be banned on Sunday, September 20. In typical Trumpian fashion, the threats rang hollow: TikTok’s U.S. operations are on the verge of being sold to a partnership between Oracle and Walmart... Читать дальше...

It’s only a few hours into Election Day, and things are already coming undone. In Michigan, Republican groups have instructed dozens of people to stand outside polling places and watch menacingly as voters enter. In Georgia, a shortage of poll workers in Atlanta leads to seven-hour lines that stretch for miles, as would-be voters try to follow social-distancing guidelines. To make matters worse, the U.S. Postal Service says it won’t be able to deliver thousands of mail-in ballots to local election... Читать дальше...

There’s a looming student debt cliff awaiting us in 2021. With America in the teeth of the Covid-19–enabled economic downturn, lawmakers suspended federal student loan payments for 80 percent of federal student loan borrowers. This measure, which President Donald Trump extended a few weeks ago, is set to expire on New Year’s Eve, which means borrowers will ring in the new year by restarting their student loan payments in one of the worst job markets in a decade. If Trump truly wanted to give relief... Читать дальше...

In October 1961, the FBI decided a poem could be a weapon. Agents at the bureau had learned about “Babi Yar,” a provocative piece of verse written by the wily young Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, about the Nazi massacre of Jews in a Ukrainian ravine—and of Soviet attempts to cover it up.

Last week I explained the pernicious long-term effect of Milton Friedman’s theory of the corporation. But the famed libertarian economist’s baleful legacy doesn’t end there: Friedman’s ideas about monetary policy have long created negative economic consequences. And now, more than 40 years after the monetarist recession that former Fed chief Paul Volcker engineered under the influence of Friedman’s theories, Jay Powell’s Federal Reserve is trying to break free from them.