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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Analytical
  • Overview
  • Hot Topic

Recommendation

The United States faces an uncertain economic future – and perhaps grueling stagflation – as it emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a panel of experts. Top economic commentators Laurence D. Fink, Neel Kashkari, Melissa S. Kearney, Lawrence H. Summers and Greg Ip discuss America’s challenges in this wide-ranging video conversation that covers inflation, labor markets, supply chains, immigration, energy transition, productivity and growth. Executives and students will find this a robust rundown of the US economy in the 2020s.

Summary

America’s economy is experiencing challenges not seen in more than four decades.

Present economic conditions bode ill for the United States. The year 2022 has so far seen either flat or negative economic growth, coupled with inflation approaching levels last seen in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Supply chains faced disruptions in the COVID-19 pandemic’s aftermath, and shortages have resulted from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, unemployment is at a nadir, and wage growth is spiking.

Expansionary economic policies, designed to staunch the corrosive effects of the pandemic on the economy, have stoked...

About the Speakers

The Aspen Institute is a nonpartisan think tank. Laurence D. Fink is the chairman and CEO of BlackRock. Greg Ip is the chief economics commentator at The Wall Street Journal. Neel Kashkari is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota. Melissa Kearney is an economics professor at the University of Maryland and the director of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group. Larry Summers is president emeritus and a professor at Harvard University.


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