Biden's US$6t budget: Start of an economic boom or inflationary ruin?

THERE is a reason why US President Joe Biden and his advisers decided to release the administration's budget proposal last Friday, on the eve of the long Memorial Day weekend.

Indeed, one of Washington's rules of thumb is that the best time to announce bad news is on late Friday evening and/or before a major holiday. The idea behind this is that on the day and hour when bureaucrats, lawmakers and, most important, journalists, are leaving work and most Americans are preparing for the weekend and are switching off from what's happening in Washington, the impact of the news on the general public would be limited.

To be fair to the administration, the US$6 trillion budget proposal - that calls for spending more money on education, research, road and bridges, high-speed Internet for all, and home healthcare for the elderly - is not in itself a piece of bad news.