Patrick Horan of the Mercatus Center writes about whether we’re in a recession:

It’s impossible to truly know if we’re going to enter a recession, or how severe such a recession would be. The unusually strong labor market may prevent (or at least ameliorate) a slowdown in economic activity in the coming months. On the other hand, the positive indicators the optimists cite may have peaked, and could soon follow the other trends and turn negative.
What is clear is that monetary and fiscal policy were too stimulative last year, and now policy-makers must deal with the repercussions: a slowing economy combined with high inflation not seen since the early 1980s. Let’s hope they interpret the situation correctly and get the next step right.

I write about last weekend’s American Economic Forum, an ISI conference in Washington, D.C.:

The American Economic Forum gave the platform of ISI, a premier conservative organization for young people, to some of those market-skeptical conservative voices. The ballroom at the upscale Omni Shoreham Hotel in Northwest, Washington, D.C., where the conference was held, was set for about 300 people, but the room was never more than half full. Young conservatives’ supposed enthusiasm for market skepticism had not translated into attendance, at least here.
Yet the message from many of the speakers amounted to an unreserved — and worrying — challenge to economic assumptions that have driven the Right for decades. With a few exceptions, their argument was that conservatives should be open to using the tools of government planning to achieve growth, with one guest even claiming that Chinese communism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system.