The Hack Gap: Interest Rate Edition

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I would like to offer a comment on the hack gap this morning:

It’s remarkable the number of liberal economists who continue to favor an interest rate cut from the Fed. They are displaying intellectually honesty here: with inflation low, there’s no reason not to take out an insurance policy that could keep the current economic expansion going for a while longer, despite the fact that it would help Donald Trump politically.

Conservative economists, by contrast, have almost universally changed their opinions, favoring high interest rates when Obama was president and now favoring low rates when Trump is president.

I’m too lazy to create an actual list of liberal and conservative economists to see whose positions have changed and whose haven’t. Maybe someone can do it and prove me wrong. But I doubt it.

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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.

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