Clearly, this economy is on some kind of journey. The question is, where is it going to wind up?

From American public media, this one is the 17th of March. Good as always to have you along, everybody. We're going to come out the other end of this week with a better idea of what the people whose job it is to keep this economy on the straight and narrow,

that would, of course, be the Federal Reserve, what they think about everything that is going on.

The central bank meets tomorrow and Wednesday on interest rates, and Sheriff Powell and the gang will also give us their sense of what our economic future might be,

their projections for unemployment and inflation and interest rates.

In the meanwhile, though, we were thinking a bit of a scene setter might be an order, just

to make sure everybody is up to speed.

So we have called Mohamed Alarion.

He's the president of Queens College, Cambridge.

Dr. Alarion, good to have you back on the program, sir.

Thank you for having me. What is your sense of what's being done to the American economy right now?

So what's being done is an attempt to we organize it both domestically and internationally.

Domestically, we're seeing major efforts going on with the government, of course.

The hope is to streamline it, make it more efficient, and it have been promised a number of measures to deregulate the private sector.

In terms of international, we're seeing attempts at a fairer trading system. This is a really

tricky thing to do both domestically internationally. It will involve what President Trump

called little disturbances in the short term, what others see as a very bumpy journey. What is completely

uncertain is what the destination looks like. Reorganize seems charitable, but let's talk about

two things, the short term and the long term. In the short term, you yourself have now come out

and said, your estimates on the chances of recession this year are now 30-ish percent instead of the 10-ish percent they were a couple of weeks ago.

Do you recall a time when a president of the United States, through his policies, has sent the United States into a recession?

I don't.

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