Chart of the Day: It’s a Small, Small World

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Politico reports that the Obama administration, in the person of Jan Eberly, Treasury’s new assistant secretary for economic policy, is pushing back on the Republican notion that “regulatory uncertainty” is damaging the economy. It’s sort of sad that she has to waste valuable neurons on this, when she could instead be doing actual useful work, but I guess that’s politics for you.

Anyway, her case is here. And part of her case is that the American economy isn’t actually suffering from any more uncertainty than the rest of the world, which suggests that American regulations can’t really be having much of an impact. The chart below shows two measures of stock market volatility, one for the U.S. and one for Europe, and as you can see, they’ve moved pretty much in lockstep during the Obama era.

Which, to make a separate point, is an impressive demonstration of the fact that we live in a global economy, not just an American one. When stuff happens, it affects us all. Keep that in mind when American bankers and Treasury officials keep telling us that “we aren’t very exposed” to a possible eurozone disaster. My guess is that we’re pretty exposed after all, which is a good reason for all of us to hope that Europe gets its act together soon.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate