$20,576

The U.S. Senate and the Trump administration have spent the better part of a week now moving the country toward a $2 trillion fiscal stimulus package designed to address the explosive economic costs of the coronavirus threat. The American economy has come to a virtual halt for the past week or so, and it’s likely to be in such a state for another couple of weeks, maybe longer. Lawmakers are under pressure to somehow prop up the economy through various mechanisms available to the legislative branch.
 

Some of you will be reading this on Feb. 12, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in 1809. Lincoln is integral to the story I’m about to tell, but, first, some context.

Susan and I are the proud caretakers of our fourth dog, Greeley, named after famed newspaper editor Horace Greeley, whose birthday was Feb. 3, 1811. We liked our previous three dogs, but we like 5-year-old Greeley even more, so what I’m about to relate is no reflection on him: It’s a tale of cultural change.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell expressed confidence in the U.S. economy despite manufacturing slowdowns brought on by the trade war with China. The Fed expects the quarter-point cut it made to short-term interest rates on Wednesday to be its last for a while.

In the same month of August, these two things happened to me: I paid $239 to a New Jersey court for the dubious pleasure of holding my cell phone in hand while driving in plain sight of a cruiser. Second, a Korean woman I don’t even remember who knew my late husband and happened to dine with a distant acquaintance, asked said acquaintance about me, and ended up writing me a check for $200. 

So it was kind of a wash, financially speaking.

China allowed its tightly controlled currency, the yuan, to plunge to a 7-to-1 valuation against the U.S. dollar Monday, its lowest level in more than a decade. The devaluation made Chinese goods cheaper around the globe at a time when the United States is trying to discourage buying from the communist country. Last week, President Donald Trump threatened 10 percent tariffs on an additional $300 billion in Chinese imports if trade talks between the nations don’t yield results soon.

The Federal Reserve announced its first interest rate cut in a decade Wednesday. The quarter-point decrease will affect the cost of many loans for homes and businesses.

Is the economy in trouble? Not yet, and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said he wants to keep it that way. He told reporters this rate cut is about sustaining growth amid economic uncertainty caused by things like the trade war with China, low inflation, and weaker global markets. He also said the Fed is not planning a long series of rate cuts, as it did in the Great Recession of the late 2000s.

Pierre Omidyar had the Midas touch. In 1995 he founded what became eBay. I don’t doubt that Omidyar worked hard, but his $11 billion fortune may be a case (compared to the typical toiler) of easy come, easy more—and that may mean trouble for the rest of us.