By Karen Petrou

As 2018 drew to a close, the Federal Reserve Board and the Financial Stability Oversight Council each pronounced financial-stability risk to be comfortingly “moderate,” much as Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson did in August of 2008.  It remains to be seen if market turmoil just days after is more than a bad blip, but there’s a still more worrisome financial-crisis risk lurking beneath volatile financial markets:  U.S. economic inequality.  Here, we show how current, acute inequality makes 2019 particularly perilous even if markets stabilize, President Trump eschews Twitter, the federal government begins anew, and all seems somehow otherwise right with the world. Continue reading “Economic Inequality, Financial Crises, and 2019” →