Looming Gas Crunch Poses ‘Historic Test’ for Europe, IEA Says
Updated July 18, 2022 9:53 am ET Listen to article (2 minutes) European nations must take urgent and coordinated action to avert a potentially disastrous...
Home builders slash prices and slow construction as buyers pull back, survey shows
Home builders are feeling jittery. That’s according to a June survey of home builder sentiment by John Burns Real Estate Consulting. Demand for new homes...
Food Prices Squeeze Poorest in Rich Countries
LONDON—Rampant food inflation is roiling the world’s least-developed nations. It is also hitting poor people in rich countries. Matsentralen Norge, a food-bank operator in oil-rich...
The Fed Can’t Print More Workers
The Federal Reserve is raising rates, the U.S. economy is weakening and recession talk is on the rise. But the biggest impediment to the job...
Powell Says Fed Must Accept Higher Recession Risk to Combat Inflation
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he was more concerned about the risk of failing to stamp out high inflation than about the possibility of...
Rising Interest Rates Will Crush the Federal Budget
The Federal Reserve’s policies of increasing interest rates and quantitative tightening—reducing its $8.9 trillion balance sheet—will increase the volume and cost of federal government borrowing,...
Pension Funds Plunge Into Riskier Bets—Just as Markets Are Struggling
U.S. public pension funds don’t have nearly enough money to pay for all their obligations to future retirees. A growing number are adopting a risky...
Larry Summers Nailed Inflation. But Is He Right on What Comes Next?
In February 2021, Larry Summers was right and I was wrong. The former Treasury secretary warned that President Biden’s stimulus package was far too large...
Could This Be an Antebellum Age?
In John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” Lucifer—who only yesterday had been God’s favorite—consoles himself with this thought: “The mind is its own place and in itself /...
IRS Is Falling Further Behind on Tax-Return Backlog, Watchdog Says
WASHINGTON—The Internal Revenue Service faces daunting mathematical and logistical challenges in its attempt to largely eliminate its tax-return backlog by the end of 2022, an...