When I talk to business groups these days, the most commonly asked question is, “Are we headed for stagflation?” I’m pretty sure they find my response unsatisfying, because I tell them it depends on their definition of the term. If they understand it to mean a period of rising unemployment…

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the idea that it might lose seemed far-fetched. Vladimir Putin appeared to have a powerful, modernized army, supported by a defense budget a dozen times larger than Ukraine’s. You didn’t have to buy into Ted Cruz-style fantasies about the prowess of a military that wasn…

The price of oil, which was extremely low during the worst of the pandemic — it actually went below $0 for a brief, weird period — has spiked as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This price spike is adding to already high inflation, and it is inhibiting the Western response to Vladimir…

Rising prices will get worse before they get better. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused the prices of oil, wheat and other commodities to soar. Official measures of the cost of shelter don’t yet fully reflect last year’s surge in the cost of newly rented apartments. So there’s still a lot of…

Last week Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical agency, released a revised estimate of the euro area’s February inflation rate. It wasn’t a happy report: Consumer prices were up 5.9 percent from a year earlier, more than most analysts had expected. And it’s going to get worse, as the effects…

Unless something drastic happens, this will be the week Republicans ram through a tax cut that adds more than a trillion dollars to federal debt while undermining health care for millions. They will do so by violating all previous norms for major legislation, having held not a single hearing and…