THIS WEEK we have two covers, on America’s remarkable economy and what could stop it, and on Russia as it stages another election to acclaim Vladimir Putin as president.
America’s economy is riding high. The unemployment rate has been below 4% for 25 months in a row. Instead of ending 2023 in recession, as widely expected, it kept going—and was nearly 3% bigger than at the end of 2022. Over five years, America’s economy has grown twice as fast as the euro zone’s and ten times as fast as Japan’s.
This performance reminded us of another cover we ran, almost a year ago. One option was to take the idea to its extreme.
In April 2023 our cowboy had been towering over the prairie. The new version had him above the clouds. That was fitting: America’s economy has remained in the saddle despite sharp interest-rate rises, a trade war with China and real wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
However, unless you remembered last year’s cover, the image was a bit baffling. Why was the horse up in the troposphere? What was it standing on? Why were its legs so long?
We thought some more and came up with two other ideas.
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