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Peter Morici

Peter Morici

Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist. He can be reached at pmorici@umd.edu.

Columns by Peter Morici

Asset Growth Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Sticking with stocks in a volatile market

These are vexing times for ordinary folks saving and investing for college expenses and retirement. With stocks exhibiting extreme volatility and growth slowing in all the major economies, many individual investors are rebalancing portfolios toward bonds -- savvy investors will resist this temptation and stick with stocks.

August 26, 2019
FILE - In this June 29, 2019, file photo, U.S. President Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, western Japan. Facing another U.S. tariff hike, Xi is getting tougher with Washington instead of backing down. Both sides have incentives to settle a trade war that is battering exporters on either side of the Pacific and threatening to tip the global economy into recession. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Who’s winning the trade war?

To listen to the White House, America is winning the trade war with China, but like other great struggles, a few battles won does not necessarily equate with victory. And progress in trade wars is not like military operations where victories can be measured by territories gained and populations pacified.

August 13, 2019
Leapfrog Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Why Washington should get behind Facebook’s Libra

Few things unite Democrats in Congress, the Trump administration and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell like opposition to Facebook's Libra. Instead, they should get behind the new cryptocurrency by crafting effective regulation.

August 8, 2019
Mexican migration officers escort a group of migrants to apply for asylum in the United States, on the International Bridge 1 in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, Wednesday, July 17, 2019. Asylum-seekers grappled to understand what a new U.S. policy that all but eliminates refugee claims by Central Americans and many others meant for their bids to find a better life in America amid a chaos of rumors, confusion and fear. (AP Photo/AP Photo/Salvador Gonzalez)

The existential crisis posed by mass immigration

Western civilization faces an existential crisis. Mass immigration, low birth rates and China's rise pose challenges our political institutions and economies appear ill-equipped to confront.

July 17, 2019
Libra Digital Currency Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Libra, a Facebook plan for digital currency, poses challenges for the Federal Reserve

Facebook recently announced it plans to launch a digital currency — Libra. It could deliver on Bitcoin's failed promise to create digital money that supplants many of the international functions of the dollar and the monopolies the Federal Reserve and other central banks enjoy creating and controlling widely accepted means of exchange and stores of wealth.

July 8, 2019
FILE - This March 28, 2018, file photo shows a Facebook logo at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Facebook’s plan to create a digital currency used across the world is already raising concern with financial regulators and privacy experts. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Why breaking up Google or Facebook won’t solve anything

Democrats in Congress with help from a few Republicans are eager to abuse antitrust enforcement to curb Big Tech — Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon (FAGA). This would be a terrible abuse of the law for problems where bigness contributes little and breaking them up won't solve much.

June 24, 2019
FILE- This June, 28, 2018, photo shows rolls of finished steel at a facility in Granite City, Ill. The president frequently boasts that the taxes he’s imposed on imports, steel and aluminum and nearly half of all goods from China, have showered the U.S. Treasury with newfound revenue. “We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs,’’ President Donald Trump tweeted last month. “MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN.’’ Yet the fact is that tariffs like Trump’s account for barely 1 percent of federal revenue. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

How the Trump tariffs tarnish America’s brand

Tariffs are crude instruments. These can raise profits and employment in protected industries but the United States and other western democracies have worked hard to lower those — and other trade barriers like subsidies, preferences in procurement for domestic suppliers and lax protection for intellectual property — because those make us poorer by frustrating the efficient global allocation of industry based on skills and natural resources and discourage R&D.

June 18, 2019
Federal Monetary Policy Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Globalizing the Federal Reserve and monetary policy

The Federal Reserve's principal tools — adjusting short term interest rates and quantitative easing for accomplishing 2 percent inflation and low unemployment — are radically out of sync with a global economy that relies on the dollar. It's high time U.S. monetary policy be realigned to reflect the reality of managing the global currency.

June 4, 2019

China, the renegade state, won’t play by the trade rules

President Trump enjoys bipartisan support for his tough stand on China, but Democrats and farm state Republicans indicate they could desert him if he fails to bring home an agreement that ends China's piracy of American technology and finally opens its markets to U.S. products.

May 19, 2019
President Donald Trump arrives to speak on energy infrastructure at the Cameron LNG export facility, Tuesday, May 14, 2019, in Hackberry, La. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

What Trump naysayers miss is that the economy is growing in different ways than in the past

Welcome to the Trump prosperity — the 3 percent GDP growth accomplished since the recent tax cuts and assault on abusive government regulation took hold are just a prelude of what could be accomplished if the endless Democratic attacks don't bring down the administration and the organized left — the mainstream media, radical feminists and socialists — don't highjack our personal liberties and destroy American capitalism.

May 14, 2019
Associated Press

Policy rooted in flawed economic theories

After years of frustration, the Federal Reserve believes it has accomplished its goal of 2 percent inflation. In reality, international oil markets did much more than its interest rate policies to raise prices and the Fed should abandon that target altogether.

May 7, 2019
Helicopter Money Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Toward a more democratic Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve — frustrated by its inability to consistently accomplish strong growth and 2 percent inflation — is reviewing strategies. Maybe it should simply hand out money to ordinary folks, helicopter money, instead of just to banks.

April 30, 2019
Bernie's Health Plan Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Bernie Sanders’ Medicare numbers don’t work

Democratic presidential hopefuls are at it again — promising free college tuition, forgiveness of student debt and to dramatically lower what individuals pay for health care. Like President Obama, if any lands in the Oval Office, the country could be saddled with another albatross — the Affordable Care Act has not tamed health care costs but it has so radically altered the marketplace that voters are afraid to dismember it.

April 23, 2019
FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2018, file photo, fallen leaves cover cars and sidewalks on a tree-lined residential block in Long Island City in the Queens borough of New York. How your parents prepare for retirement, long-term care and estate planning can affect your own financial future. Talking to them now can save your family headaches and messy conversations down the road. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

Stress testing your retirement plans

If you are planning to retire sometime in the next several years, then you should stress test your plans — living arrangements, retirement portfolio and income and anticipated leisure pursuits — because retirement is like your first days in kindergarten, full of surprises.

April 16, 2019
Taller Buildings Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Building taller cities to cope with climate change is less costly than the Green New Deal

Humans are unique in our ability to change the environment and unlock the secrets of nature. Erecting shelters, building aqueducts and mining the Earth, we moved from the temperate plains of Africa and caves of Chauvet-Pont d'Arc to harness agriculture, establish great cities and create technological wonders. Fossil fuels accelerated the ascent of man but according to the architects of the 2016 Paris Agreement, we must curb our appetite or global warming will make uninhabitable vast settlements.

April 2, 2019