The emergence of the coronavirus could pose a tough test for a public health infrastructure that is fraying at the edges due to years of budget cuts and limited resources.

Federal health officials warned Tuesday that the new coronavirus will spread much more than it has in the U.S., and financial investors continued their repricing down of assets as a result. Equities fell another 3% or so. Politicians, meanwhile, were repricing upward their chances of another burst of new federal spending.

A global pandemic? Don't bet against it. That appears to be the verdict of stock markets around the world, not least when it comes to the somewhat unusual financial instrument known as pandemic bonds.

Voters in Lemon Grove are being asked to approve a sales tax increase proponents say will save the city from being run by the County Board of Supervisors, but public finance experts aren’t so sure the new revenue will be anything more than a temporary reprieve.

How did US regional economies perform recently? What are the key factors driving their growth and decline? 

There must have been something about Mary — Mary Curley, that is. In her final two years before retiring, the former Hinsdale elementary schools superintendent received two 20 percent raises and left the school system with a salary of $385,378, up from $267,624 two years before. That's more than $100,000 in increases.

A central bank’s primary job is to offset major disturbances to the economy. Today, the novel coronavirus is a material risk to the economy. It represents an unexpected shock, and the Federal Reserve should lead the world’s central banks in taking immediate action.

Let it be said that historians will surely marvel – and at some point soon – about the grand delusion of the present era. Namely, the near universal belief that central bankers could print, peg and palaver the main street economy into unfailing expansion and ever rising prosperity and that there were essentially no macro-risks to soaring stock prices that their toolkits couldn’t contain and counteract.

Accrual reporting – recording the economic substance of transactions when they occur rather than when cash settlement occurs – is fundamental to good decision making, transparency and accountability.