Commerce

By James Pethokoukis and Arthur Turrell Fusion energy has been the promise of physicists for decades, but is it finally arriving? As we face a warming climate and increasing energy needs, fusion power may hold the potential to deliver an

By Kyle Pomerleau The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently published its monthly budget review for September, now estimating a spike in federal tax receipts for the 2021 fiscal year. According to CBO, individual income tax receipts will climb by $443 billion (27.5

By Jim Harper Last week, the Digital Dollar Project (DDP) highlighted the challenges involved in producing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that will preserve important values such as privacy. Every CBDC effort we have found gives privacy protection short shrift even

Governor Kathy Hochul wants New York City to more aggressively reclaim its waterfront for public park space — and she thinks that the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn is precisely the place to start. Hochul wants to demolish more than

Incoming Governor Kathy Hochul plans to invest heavily in the Metropolitan Transit Authority, including billions to modernize aging track and signal systems, to purchase new trains, to construct new subway and elevated rail lines, and to rebuild the system’s busiest

By Mark Jamison The White House has announced what it calls a historic bipartisan infrastructure deal that would cost about $1.2 trillion. About 27 percent of the money goes to what is generally thought of as infrastructure: roads, bridges, railroads, the electric grid,

By Jim Harper “CONGRESS IS SO BROKEN,” shouted Caitlin Long, founder and CEO at the Avanti Financial Group. Having spent two decades on Wall Street in stints at Solomon Brothers, Credit Suisse, and Morgan Stanley, she now inhabits the world of cryptocurrency. She

BY ANGELA RACHIDI The disappointing April jobs report raised new questions about how government policies, such as enhanced unemployment insurance, have slowed the economic recovery by discouraging people from returning to work. Some have suggested that closed childcare facilities and schools, not employment disincentives, are

BY BILL HAMMOND New York’s hospitals remained near the bottom of two quality report cards issued last week. In an update to Hospital Compare, a consumer guide from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the state’s hospitals received an

BY E.J. McMAHON Today was the (rescheduled) deadline for filing 2020 federal income tax returns, which makes this New York’s third annual SALT-Free Income Tax Day. By midnight tonight, most Empire State residents will have been reminded once again that—despite

BY E.J. McMAHON Private-sector employment in New York increased faster than the nationwide recovery rate in the month of April, according to the state’s latest monthly jobs report. The April count of private-sector employment was estimated at 7.4 million jobs, up

BY E.J. McMAHON Since the late 1960s, New York’s primary export to the rest of the nation has been people, as reflected in federal data tracking population flows within and between states. The Empire State has lost a net 1,585,770 residents to

BY MATT WEIDINGER Fact-checkers have started to notice the shaky jobs claims made by Biden administration officials in touting their $2.2 trillion American Jobs Plan. That includes this whopper from President Biden last week: “Independent analysis shows that if we pass this plan, the

BY PAUL H. KUPIEC Newly-elected administrations try to lay the groundwork for their legacy in the first 100-days in office. During their “honeymoon” period, they introduce landmark legislation and issue executive orders to address existential economic or national security concerns,

BY BRENT ORRELL That’s the question raised by a new incentive program designed to draw workers freed from geography by remote-work options to live in the state of West Virginia. Ascend West Virginia is offering $12,000 and other perks as incentives to draw

BY ANGELA RACHIDI When the coronavirus pandemic hit American shores in early 2020, questions emerged over how employers and employees would handle the anticipated need for workers to take time away for illness or to care for family members. Without a national paid leave law,

BY MATT WEIDINGER The Washington Post reports President Joe Biden’s next trillion-dollar spending plan “is expected to devote hundreds of billions of dollars to new programs,” including “$225 billion for child-care funding; $225 billion for paid family and medical leave; $200 billion

BY JAMES PETHOKOUKIS  What sort of shape is the American economy in after a year of the pandemic? Maybe better than you might guess. Even better than many economists might have guessed. As the econ team at Goldman Sachs notes: