The Age of Fake Policy

On Thursday, at a rough estimate, 75,000 Americans were laid off or fired by their employers. Some of those workers will find good new jobs, but many will end up earning less, and some will remain unemployed for months or years.

If that sounds terrible to you, and you’re asking what economic catastrophe just happened, the answer is, none. In fact, I’m just assuming that Thursday was a normal day in the job market.

.. Bear in mind that corporations have every incentive to go along with the spin. Suppose that you’re a C.E.O. who wants to curry favor with the new administration. One thing you can do, of course, is steer business to Trump hotels and other businesses. But another thing you can do is help generate Trump-friendly headlines.

Raghuram Rajan: Fed tightening eases stimulus pressure globally

Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan says the Federal Reserve’s plan to further withdraw support for the US economy will ease pressure on other major central banks

Research shows the US isn’t losing a large number of jobs because of free trade, said Rajan, adding his voice to the growing debate about the merits of globalization. In the US, job losses from factory closures are being replaced by more high-tech positions via a shift to automation

Trump Announces Japanese Telecom Co. Will Invest $50 Billion to Create 50,000 Jobs in U.S.

President-elect announced that the Japanese telecommunications company will invest up to $50 billion in the U.S. which includes plans to create 50,000 new jobs here.

Several sources reported that Son, 59, was set to meet with Trump on Tuesday. SoftBank is a major investor in Sprint Corp., one of the largest cell providers in the U.S.

Gritting Our Teeth and Giving President Trump a Chance

I’ve seen past elections that were regarded as the end of the world — including, in many Democratic circles, the Reagan triumph of 1980 — and the republic survived. This time as well, our institutions are stronger than any one man. We are not Weimar Germany.

It was disgraceful that many Republicans eight years ago tried to make President Obama fail. That’s not the path to emulate. Today, having lost, we owe it to our nation to grit our teeth and give President-elect Trump a chance.

.. Trump is inexperienced and makes extreme statements, but he’s not ideological. He used to be pro-choice, then suggested that women should be punished for getting an abortion, but neither is a core view — because Trump doesn’t have a core. He is an opportunist.

.. The area where Trump would be most dangerous is foreign affairs, because there he can act largely at will, unconstrained by law. Yet it is perfectly possible that Trump will appoint as secretary of state an experienced Republican like Richard Haass, with Stephen Hadley as secretary of defense, thus signaling that adults are in charge of foreign policy.

.. In 1974, when President Richard Nixon was drinking heavily during the Watergate crisis, his defense secretary, James Schlesinger, ordered the military not to obey any presidential instruction for a nuclear attack without checking further.

.. Democrats are too quick to caricature Trump supporters as deplorables. Sure, some are racists or misogynists, but many are good people who had voted for Obama in the past. My rural hometown, Yamhill, Ore., is pro-Trump, and I can tell you: The voters there are not all bigoted monsters, but well-meaning people upended by economic changes such as the disappearance of good manufacturing jobs. They feel betrayed by the Democratic and Republican establishments, and finally a candidate spoke to them.

.. Liberals condemn the stereotyping of Latinos or Muslims but have been quick to stereotype Trump voters.

.. Look, ordinary Americans have not somehow lurched into bigotry, even if they have backed a man I consider a bigot. A Bloomberg poll found that if Obama had been allowed to seek a third term, he would have defeated Trump in a landslide, 53 percent to 41 percent.