Brink of recession with a very real possibility of a catastrophic default. hang seng reversed some of monday s gain. they eased some covid test requirements. on wall street stock index futures are pretty much narrowly mixed here after a down day for stocks. 482 points off dow. s&p and nasdaq fell more than 1%. a strong batch of economic news says higher rates are here for longer and a survey from the business roundtable shows ceos more cautious amid persistent and global economic headwinds. on inflation watch, gas prices fell another two pennies sitting at $3.38 a gallon. let s bring in harvard economics professor ken robof. so nice to see you. we ve been seeing hopeful signs that inflation might be peaking. what do you think about wages? strong wage growths and strong
Disappointed we fell short on voting rights. i was disappointed it took us so long to get the infrastructure deal done. now that we have it done, i think we re going to see it being very helpful. and i do think we will get a version of build back better, i call it education in workforce, because to me that s the core of it, i think we ll get it done. you re right, sometimes it s easier to close a deal if everybody s focused on something else rather than closing phase of those negotiations. i ll also mention, you know, as we re grappling as democrats with what could be a challenging midterm, look, this economic growth number today, you add that up to unemployment declines in wage growths, and we still have some challenges, but i see the signs together with some of the health data of kind of great american comeback that we might really be living and experiencing in a powerful way come spring. i think the successful battle over highly qualified supreme court nominee could add to that
There s a lot of research now that suggests that the country actually wantins a version of t affordable care act and they want democrats to improve on that. in a typical presidency. what i also think is interesting is 22 states have actually lost manufacturing jobs in the last few years and what that says to me is even though trump s base i think, voted more for culture than the economy it does leave an opening for democrats to talk about what hasn t happened under the trump administration. all of these policies about bringing jobs back that have gone unfulfilled. so i do think there s an opening. a 3.7% unemployment and a wage growths of 3.2% and those are the kind of numbers that are concrete, have not moved. in fact, they re getting better. the african-american unemployment rate is strong, and if those numbers continue, those are the kind of factors that make an impact on voters and
The numbers show that wage growth has been running 3.4 to 3.6% for them. a little bit under 3% for the so-called uber rich. i m not saying that that shows there s not a chasm there, but chasms have existed going back decades. i find when they play fast and loose with that, you think wait a minute. this is distorted. they re not getting any wage increases. that s a lie. that is a lie. we ve seen slow and steady wage growths at least a decade now. one thing that is growing, income and equality. the last 30 years, we ve seen income and equality grow. that income and equality has narrowed in the last 15 months. that s my i just don t believe all the facts are getting out. one thing about this
We have had a trade war with europe, with china, basically every trading partner in the world. and the idea everyone wants to move towards zero tariffs, that s great. but that was part of the negotiating we had under obama, and trump paused it and instead decided to pick a trade war with allies in the eu. i don t think he gets credit for starting a crisis and saying we re going to pause that crisis when there was no actual deal made. all he said was we re going to pause the tensions right now. let me jump in and change subject if i can what this means for you. by you i mean the american people. bloomberg was the first to point this out this week. i think it was real wage growths. and they noted under the trump administration change said in real wages since 2006 even with the growth we re seeing right now you can see there s not a