This week’s covers

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.