THE ECONOMY IN Is it time to head to Wall Street or break the piggy bank? Our experts look at what to expect as a new administration in Washington tries to bring the country out of the pandemic crisis. EVELYN DILSAVER: Every president assumes office with a crisis in hand, but nobody’s ever assumed it with maybe four or five crises at the same time, with COVID, the vaccine distribution, our economic devastation, especially with the small businesses, 10 million fewer Americans employed than before COVID, and two-thirds of our children cannot attend school in person. I would love to hear your perspective on a president coming in to that kind of a setting. And one other caveat: Most presidents only have 100 days to get something done before they run into the buzz saw, so if you were to give him advice today, what advice would you give him to try to accomplish in those first 100 days? MICHAEL BOSKIN: Let me just start by saying that generally when there’s a party change, [the party that gets elected has] been running against a previous president and what he, or maybe eventually she, has done, they focus on what are perceived to be the weaknesses at targeting the voters they think they can get, and then they have many pronouncements of things they’re going to do, generally hyperbolic, to some extent. In this case, of course, Joe Biden, who was a moderate—a center-left candidate in the Democratic field—fended off the so-called progressives. I’m not sure I would [say] what they want to accomplish I would call progress, but in any event he fended them off, but he made a variety of accommodations with them. Most of his policies move—to oversimplify—halfway to some of their more extreme policies. He did that and retained some strong unity, in addition to some voters voting because they didn’t want another four years of Trump, even if they didn’t particularly care for the policies [Biden] was proposing. He has to deal with that. He has to deal with a closely divided Congress and evenly split Senate, although Kamala Harris will be able to cast a tie-breaking vote in 50/50 votes. He will be able to get some things passed with 51 votes, the budget reconciliation [process], if he chooses to go that route, but there are a variety of ways he could work with Republicans on a
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