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Skanda Amarnath

Executive Director skanda@employamerica.org

About

As co-founder and Executive Director of Employ America, Skanda both leads our economic policy advocacy and ensures the long-term sustainability of the organization. Skanda’s commitment to our mission of full employment informs all of his work, from regular analyses of price and jobs data, to interpreting and forecasting market conditions, to developing new frameworks for Federal Reserve policy, strategy, and communication.

Skanda draws on a foundation of knowledge and career experience at the intersection of finance and policy. He was Vice President at MKP Capital Management operating as a market economist and strategist, and previously served as an Analyst within the Capital Markets function of the Research Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has undergraduate degrees in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Columbia, and holds a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia Law School.

A frequent media guest and commentator, Skanda has been featured or quoted in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Heatmap News, Politico, Vox, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the American Prospect, the Washington Post, and more. He is also a regular contributor to Bloomberg’s Odd Lots newsletter. Skanda is based in Jersey City, NJ, and enjoys cooking, tennis, and cycling in his spare time.

Skanda Amarnath's Work

759 Posts
Skanda Amarnath

Critics are claiming the American Rescue Plan was too ambitious as fiscal stimulus. The data suggests today's inflation is due to the speed with which the economy is adding jobs, not the number of jobs added. As such, critics are really wishing for a slower recovery with a slower pace of job growth.

It means that the White House and Congress should, where feasible, use targeted fiscal policies and structural reforms to equitably address the demand- and supply-side challenges that contribute to inflationary pressure.

Healthcare policy interventions could provide downward pressure on core PCE both in 2022 and in the years ahead. Given the salience of inflation, disinflationary healthcare policies should be a key priority for Congress and the Biden Administration alike.

Whenever inflation becomes a part of political or economic discourse, policymakers and commentators instinctively reach for narratives and models drawn from the experience of the 1970s inflation. However, these models offer little explanation for even adjacent experiences of inflation.

Creative approaches to financing investment in public assets and the private sector abound throughout American history. The New Deal, the CARES Act and other legislation have made use of government corporations, equity purchases and loan guarantees to generate durable and appreciating public assets.

Given the Fed’s recent framework revisions and forward guidance commitment to maintain current interest rates until “maximum employment” is achieved, the Fed’s communication with respect to its assessment of “maximum employment” is overdue for a clarification.

This post is the first in a series that uses the history and economics of the American semiconductor industry to ask big picture questions about the future of fiscal policy and industrial policy.

The Framework Review and Forward Guidance center labor market outcomes over inflation in evaluating interest rate policy. However, the Fed haven't clarified how they will evaluate inflationary dynamics under the new regime.

While The Shock may have ended, labor market indicators suggest that we still need to respond appropriately to The Slog if we are to avoid a repeat of the lackluster “jobless recovery” following the 2008 crisis.

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