Economy is strong. Leadership is shaky. Which will win out in 2019?

The boom year of 2018 may be unlikely to repeat itself

Sometime in the last couple of months, predictions of a major economic downturn or recession in 2019 went from being a crank view to the conventional wisdom.

It is true that the global economy is sputtering, and that the stock market is in its worst pullback in a decade. But this sense of gloom and pessimism has gotten ahead of the facts on the ground, especially concerning the US economy.

The real risk is not that insurmountable challenges knock the economy off course. It is that poor leadership converts moderate economic shocks into a crisis.

The combination of erratic behaviour from the president