Unrealized Gains, Baby Formula Shortage, and Roe v. Wade

Tax Policy:

May 13: IRS blasted for destroying millions of information returns

On Monday, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released a report on the processing of business tax returns, noting that the IRS decided in March 2021 to destroy millions of paper information returns because of its inability to process all the paper returns it was receiving.

The IRS typically uses information returns such as Form 1099-MISC to verify the accuracy of the income tax returns filed by taxpayers. IRS officials noted that once the tax year ends, the information returns can no longer be processed anyway due to system limitations. The IRS has taken steps to hire thousands more employees to help with processing returns after it was recently granted direct authority by Congress.

"Considering the struggles the IRS has faced in keeping up with returns' processing the last two years, the recent TIGTA report highlighting the revelation of the IRS's destruction of 30 million documents last year has been concerning," said AICPA vice president of taxation Edward Karl in a statement Friday.

"Information returns are not tax returns, and they are documents submitted to the IRS by third-party payors, not taxpayers. Ninety-nine percent of the information returns we used were matched to corresponding tax returns and processed. The remaining 1% of those documents were destroyed due to a software limitation and to make room for new documents relevant to the pending 2021 filing season. There were no negative taxpayer consequences as a result of this action. Taxpayers or payers have not been and will not be subject to penalties resulting from this action." The agency blamed the problem on its antiquated technology.

"In 2020, the IRS prioritized the processing of backlogged tax returns to get taxpayers their refunds and support other COVID-related relief over inputting the less than 1% of information documents - mostly Form 1099s - that were submitted on paper." System constraints require the IRS to process the paper information return forms by the end of the calendar year in which they were received.

May 13: Biden’s tax on unrealized gains will hit far more taxpayers than he claims

President Biden and Congressional Democrats say they want to make "The rich" pay their "fair share." Their solution is a massive transformation of the tax system to levy an annual tax on unrealized gains of assets like stocks, real estate, and collectibles.

President Biden's Fiscal Year 2023 budget calls for imposing an annual 20 percent tax on taxpayers with income and assets that exceed $100 million, a $360 billion tax increase.

Currently, taxpayers only pay capital gains tax when they sell an asset. Taxpayers impacted by the tax on unrealized gains will be incentivized to move overseas to avoid the tax, moving much-needed capital outside the U.S. For those who keep their assets in the U.S., this tax would still lead to a reduction in new investment in the economy, harming working families via wage reduction. While the left insists that we must tax unrealized gains to ensure that the wealthy "pay their fair share," the tax code is already steeply progressive.

The Joint Committee on Taxation found that taxpayers with incomes of $1 million or more pay an average federal tax rate of 31.5 percent, while the bottom half of income earners pay an average rate of just 6.3 percent. The Biden tax will create new complexity in the tax code and expand the power of the IRS. It will wreak havoc on the economy and likely grow to hit far more Americans than intended.

Economic News/Policy: 

May 17: Retail sales rise for the fourth straight month as prices keep climbing.

Retail sales rose 0.9 percent in April, increasing for the fourth consecutive month, as consumer prices continue to escalate at their fastest pace in four decades. The increase in spending in the United States last month follows a revised 1.4 percent month-over-month gain in March when gasoline prices soared amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"Despite the surge in prices weighing on their purchasing power, the U.S. consumer now appears to be single-handedly keeping the global economy afloat," Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note.

The Commerce Department's new data, which isn't adjusted for inflation, was an early estimate of spending during a month when prices rose 0.3 percent from the prior month. The rapid pace of inflation has led companies to raise prices for their goods to cover the higher costs of commodities, labor, and transportation. Companies like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have introduced higher prices for their products, and airfares are also climbing.

May 16: Bernanke: Fed’s slow response to inflation was ‘mistake’

In a Monday interview with CNBC, Bernanke said the Fed should have started the process of hiking interest rates sooner than it did as inflation began to rise last year and the Biden administration pumped another $1.9 trillion in stimulus into the economy. "There were a couple of issues, I think, that are related primarily to the pandemic itself and the way that it's scrambled the usual indicators that made it harder for the Fed to read the economy," he continued.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and bank officials are racing to raise interest rates high enough to curb inflation, which stood at an annual rate of 8.3 percent in April, without slowing the economy into a recession. A growing number of economists fear the Fed waited too long to raise interest rates after slashing them to near-zero levels in March 2020 and buying trillions of dollars in bonds to keep credit markets flowing. Bernanke, who chaired the Fed from 2006 to 2014, said the central bank made two main mistakes in responding to the surge of inflation: being too slow to pivot toward hikes out of concerns of spooking markets, and assuming pandemic-related supply shortages and hiring troubles would pass several months ago.

"The Fed believed in the middle of 2021 that these factors would likely solve themselves over time - that, in other words, that the supply shocks were called transitory and so they didn't need to respond to the early stages of inflation because it was going to go away by itself. That proved wrong."

"Jay Powell was on [the Fed] board during the taper tantrum in 2013, which was a very unpleasant experience. He wanted to avoid that kind of thing by giving people as much warning as possible. And so that gradualism was one of several reasons why the Fed didn't respond more quickly to the inflationary pressure in the middle of 2021," Bernanke said.

May 16: Yellen Looks to Get Global Tax Deal Back on Track During Europe Trip

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen arrived in Europe this week to join U.S. allies in confronting multiple threats to the world economy: Russia’s war in Ukraine, soaring inflation, and food shortages.

But one of Ms. Yellen’s first orders of business during a stop in Poland will be trying to get the global tax deal that she brokered last year back on track after months of fledgling deliberations about how to enact it. The two-pronged pact among more than 130 countries that was reached last October aimed to eliminate corporate tax havens by enacting a 15 percent global minimum tax.

The European Union has already delayed its timeline for putting the tax changes in place by a year and progress has been halted over objections by Poland, which last month vetoed a plan to enact the new tax rate by the end of next year. Polish officials have also expressed concern that the two parts of the tax agreement are moving ahead at different paces, as well as trepidation about the impact that raising its tax rate will have on its economy at a time when the country is absorbing waves of Ukrainian refugees.

"Its fluid, it's moving, it's a moving target," Pascal Saint-Amans, the director of the center for tax policy and administration at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said of the negotiations at the D.C. Bar's annual tax conference this month.

Countries like Ireland, with a historically low corporate tax rate, have been wary of increasing their rates if others do not follow suit, so it has been important to ensure that there is a common understanding of the new tax rules to avoid opening the door to new loopholes.

"The idea of having multiple countries put the same rules in place is a new concept in tax," said Barbara Angus, the global tax policy leader at Ernst & Young and a former chief tax counsel on the House Ways and Means Committee. An earlier effort by House Democrats to adopt a tax plan that would satisfy the terms of the agreement fell apart in the Senate, where Democrats continue to disagree over the scope and cost of a tax and spending bill that President Biden has proposed.

May 15: Economy Week Ahead: U.S. Consumers, Housing Market in Focus

Monday: China’s economic activity is expected to cool further in April after authorities tightened rules to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal forecast that retail sales, a key gauge of consumer spending, fell 5.4% from a year earlier in April, widening from a drop of 3.4% in March. Industrial production and fixed-asset investment are expected to rise, but at a slower pace than earlier in the year.

Tuesday: U.S. retail sales data for April will show how consumers are responding to high inflation, volatility in financial markets, geopolitical uncertainty, strong job creation, and rising wages. Economists expect sales to rise for the fourth straight month, aided in part by a rebound in auto purchases.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell joins the WSJ Future of Everything Festival for a conversation on the future of the economy. Markets will be looking for more context and clarity on monetary policy as inflation remains elevated and the broader economic environment appears uncertain.

Wednesday: U.K. inflation, already at a three-decade high, is expected to move up yet again in April, as rising energy costs, a mismatch between supply and demand for many goods and climbing wages add more pressure to consumer prices. The Bank of England forecasts that annual inflation will reach about 10% this year.

Thursday: U.S. existing-home sales fell for the second straight month in March, as rising mortgage rates and climbing prices combined to cool the market. April data from the National Association of Realtors is forecast to show another drop in sales as affordability continues to wane.

May 15: Plunge in crypto values boosts calls for regulations

A plunge in cryptocurrency values and the collapse of popular tokens are stoking panic among some investors and boosting pressure on Washington to act. Their steep recent declines have sent shockwaves through the broader crypto market, knocking out the Terra network entirely.

The Terra network ran two cryptocurrencies: Luna, a digital token traded and exchanged like bitcoin, and UST, a "Stablecoin" meant to always be equivalent to $1. While some stablecoin issuers use reserves of cash or other safe investment assets to back up the value of their tokens, UST was pegged to the dollar through a Terra algorithm that would either create or burn Luna depending on its performance.

Though Terra investors have suffered deep losses, the damage is unlikely to upend the broader financial system given its limited connections to non-crypto assets and traditional financial firms.

Gellasch said a similar sell-off of stablecoins backed with other financial assets could trigger broader dysfunction in financial markets. Crypto skeptics and advocates for tougher financial rules say the Terra episode should be a catalyst for Washington to finally update and expand regulations for stablecoins. Lawmakers in both parties generally agree on the need for adjusting current financial regulations to better fit the unique ways crypto blurs traditional lines between securities, commodities, and currencies.

May 13: White House gets boxed in on inflation

President Biden is boxed in by high inflation, leaving him with few options to take the heat off on an issue that is hurting his party politically. Biden has limited control over inflation beyond proposing policies and investments that could take months, if not years, to make an impact.

While the U.S. has added more than 8 million jobs since Biden took office and pushed the jobless rate down to pre-pandemic levels, consumer prices rose 8.3 percent over the past 12 months, according to inflation data released Wednesday by the Labor Department.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who was passed over by former President Obama to lead the Fed in 2014, was among the fiercest critics of both the White House and the Fed's patience in the face of inflation.

Biden thanked the Senate for confirming Powell, and his other Federal Reserve nominees while reiterating that tacking inflation is his "Top domestic priority."

Every speech from the president on inflation this week has included a stab at Scott and his proposed tax plan, which the White House has declared is representative of all Republicans' economic agenda.

The back-and-forth also escalated this week when Scott said Biden should resign to solve high inflation and Biden proclaimed Scott "Has a problem." Other congressional Republicans have said they are working on a plan to combat inflation, but nothing has been introduced and until then the White House is expected to keep referring to Scott's plan as the Republican plan.

May 12: Inflation Is Headed Lower—but Maybe Not Low Enough

While supply disruptions are subsiding, without slower demand, inflation will still be too high for the Fed to stop raising rates. The bad news is that in April, for the second month in a row, inflation clocked in above 8%. The good news is that sometime in the next 12 months, it will very likely fall to around half that.

A bottom-up analysis of the consumer price index's components, inflation-linked bond yields, and wage behavior all point toward inflation settling at roughly 4%.The more important question is what comes after that? The hope by many-including the Federal Reserve-is that it keeps heading down toward the Fed's 2% target by itself.

There are good reasons it will stay around 4% or even drift higher. That wouldn't be acceptable to the Fed and opens the door to even higher interest rates than markets now expect, more market carnage, and a weaker economy.

May 11: Biden seeks to boost US production to deal with food shortage

President Biden on Wednesday announced new actions to boost production on U.S. farms to help combat global food insecurity during Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"Folks, we can make sure that American agricultural exports will make up for the gap in Ukrainian supplies," Biden said in remarks at the O'Connor family farm in Kankakee, Ill. Ukraine is the world's largest producer of wheat, and it has 20 million tons of grain in silos.

The White House on Wednesday announced new actions that aim to give farmers resources to boost production, including moves to increase the number of counties eligible for double cropping insurance by 681, bringing the total number of counties to as many as 1,935.

The administration will also increase technical assistance by boosting outreach to farmers and streamlining the application process for farmers to use technology-driven precision agriculture. Precision agriculture is a farm management system that allows farmers to use technology to target the application of inputs to soil and plant needs, which saves money by using less fertilizer without reducing yields.

It will double the funding for domestic fertilizer production from the administration's initial $250 million investment to $500 million to lower costs and boost availability for farmers. Biden praised American farmers as "The breadbasket of democracy."

May 11: Cooling inflation yields little consumer relief

Inflation may have finally peaked after more than a year of supply chain snarls, labor shortages, and a flood of stimulus driving prices higher. Consumer prices rose 8.3 percent over the 12 months ending in April, according to the Labor Department's consumer price index, down slightly from an annual inflation rate of 8.5 percent in March.

Used car prices, which spiked last year and have remained high since have fallen sharply since the start of the year and will let out some of the pressure on overall inflation numbers. Higher gas prices also fuel inflation for other goods and services, especially food and transportation, which involve high levels of travel and energy usage.

While gas prices fell 6.7 percent on the month, food prices fell 0.9 percent in April alone and 9.4 percent on the year - the steepest annual increase in 41 years.

A record 18.6 percent monthly spike in airline ticket prices and 0.5 percent increase in shelter costs also played key roles in April's inflation. Diane Swonk, the chief economist at Grant Thornton, warned that recent double-digit climbs in rents and housing prices are yet to appear in the Labor Department's inflation data.

May 11: Inflation Rises 8.3 In April As Fed Races To Control Prices

Data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics gave policymakers nascent hope that soaring inflation may be starting to slow: prices rose 8.3 percent in April compared with a year ago, and 0.3 percent compared with the month before.

The costs of shelter, food, airfare, and new vehicles were the largest contributors to April inflation.

Fed officials often look to core inflation to understand how inflation is behaving across the entire economy. High inflation has been a scourge on a recovery that has been strong by many other measures, hurting the president's approval ratings and intensifying pressure on the Fed.

The Fed has launched a plan to slash inflation with seven interest rate increases this year. Even as Fed policymakers race to control inflation and cool the economy, the path is tricky.

Inflation has risen significantly faster than the Fed or White House expected, despite warnings from prominent economists including former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and Republicans who hammered the Fed for being behind the curve.

May 10: Yellen points to hedge funds and unregulated cryptocurrency as sources of instability

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen took heat from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers Tuesday as she told them that "The inflation outlook remains quite uncertain." Yellen delivered a report to the Senate Banking Committee from the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which was set up in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis to make sure market crashes and government bailouts on that scale would never be needed again. She argued for greater financial regulation at one of the most precarious economic moments since 2008, pointing specifically to risks posed by over-leveraged investment funds and unregulated cryptocurrency.

"There is the potential for continued volatility and unevenness of global growth as countries continue to grapple with the pandemic," she testified, calling attention to the use of borrowed money by hedge funds and other sophisticated investors that "Can make them vulnerable to acute financial stresses." "These stresses can be transmitted and amplified to the broader financial system," Yellen said.

While the FSOC report identified vulnerabilities stemming from several different kinds of investment funds, Yellen agreed with a recent assessment by the Federal Reserve that "The banking system remains strong overall with robust capital and liquidity."

"Secretary Yellen, you, along with then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Tim Geithner and Jack Lew, wrote a letter in 2019 opposing the revised guidance. You stated that the changes would 'neuter the designation authority and 'amount to a substantial weakening of the post-crisis reforms,'" Warren said to Yellen.

Ukraine Crisis/Russia’s Economic Impact: 

May 13: Treasury Warns Foreign Banks Against Helping Russia Evade Sanctions

The Biden administration is urging international banks not to help Russia evade sanctions, warning that firms risk losing access to markets in the United States and Europe if they support Russian businesses or oligarchs that are facing financial restrictions as a result of the war in Ukraine. In private meetings on Friday with representatives of international banks in New York, Adewale Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, laid out the consequences of helping Russians flout sanctions.

"If you provide material support to a sanctioned individual or a sanctioned entity, we can extend our sanctions regime to you and use our tools to go after you as well," Mr. Adeyemo said in an interview on Friday. Mr. Adeyemo said that U.S. banks had been careful to avoid violating American sanctions, but that Russian individuals and businesses were looking to set up trusts and use proxies as workarounds.

Most jurisdictions have been complying with the sanctions, but some, such as the United Arab Emirates, have continued to provide a safe haven for Russian assets.

"You've seen several Russian yachts move from ports, countries that have extended sanctions to countries that haven't," Mr. Adeyemo said. In 2019 the British bank Standard Chartered paid $1.1 billion to settle cases brought by the Justice Department, Treasury, New York's state banking regulator, and state prosecutors over transactions it had carried out for Cuba, Syria, Iran, and Sudan in violation of U.S. sanctions.

Environmental Policy:

May 16: Cutting Air Pollution From Fossil Fuels Would Save 50,000 Lives A Year

Eliminating air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels would prevent more than 50,000 premature deaths and provide more than $600 billion in health benefits in the United States every year, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers. Published in the journal GeoHealth, the study reports the considerable health benefits of removing from the air harmful fine particulates, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides produced by electricity generation, transportation, industrial activities, and building functions such as heating and cooking.

These economic activities from coal, oil, and natural gas are also major sources of carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change, so cutting back on their emissions provides additional benefits.

"Our work provides a sense of the scale of the air quality health benefits that could accompany deep decarbonization of the U.S. energy system," said Nicholas A. Mailloux, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the Nelson Institute.

"Between 32 percent and 95 percent of the health benefits from eliminating emissions in a region will remain in that region," the study says.

On average, slightly more than two-thirds of the health benefits of removing emissions in a region stay in that region. "The report highlights the air quality benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by transitioning the energy system away from fossil fuels," said Susan Anenberg, director of George Washington University's Climate and Health Institute, who was not involved in the study.

ICYMI: 

May 13: White House goes on defense of baby formula shortage

The White House was on the defense on Friday over its reaction to the shortage in baby formula, emphasizing that it quickly took action on the issue.

"We have not waited to take action," White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters when asked why steps weren't taken until the situation was in the limelight. She did not offer a ballpark window for how many weeks or months the White House expects it will take for baby formula to be plentiful at big box retail stores.

The White House has suggested parents call their pediatricians when pressed this week on what to do if they can't find the formula. The White House just launched a website to answer people's questions about the shortage, and Psaki said that was in response to a need they saw over the last 24 hours.

Psaki also reiterated that the White House has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate any price gouging in the infant formula market. "The production of baby formula is so specialized and so specific that you can't just use the Defense Production Act to say to a company that produces something else, produce the baby formula. It just doesn't work that way exactly," she said.

May 12: Biden, Lawmakers Rush To Address Formula Shortage

President Biden and lawmakers from both parties are scrambling to address a growing lack of baby formula in many stores that has made it difficult for some parents to feed their young children. Then administration officials announced they would cut bureaucratic red tape in hopes of getting more formula to stores more quickly, call on the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to crack down on formula price-gouging, and increase imports of formula to boost the domestic supply.

Pelosi also said the House Appropriations Committee would hold a hearing next week ahead of introducing an emergency supplemental funding bill for floor consideration that would address the infant formula shortage. 

In response to reports of price-gouging on formula, the Justice Department is also now working with state attorneys general to push them to monitor price-gouging on the formula market and Biden on Thursday also asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate reports of price-gouging.

The administration is also working to increase imports of formula - the United States produces 98 percent of its formula supply, according to an administration fact sheet - probably from countries like Chile, Ireland, Mexico, and the Netherlands.

Speaking to reporters Thursday afternoon, Psaki said Biden had been briefed on the formula shortage before this week, and she also stressed that the administration understands the magnitude of the crisis. Democrats were quick to respond to mounting attacks, pointing to Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro first raising the issue in March and obtaining a whistleblower complaint within Abbott that alleged the formula recall could have been prevented if it were not for the company falsifying records of test seals and releasing untested formula as well as its lax clean workplace procedures.

May 12: Senate confirms Powell for the second term as Fed chief

The Senate on Thursday voted to confirm Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for a second term leading the central bank's board of governors as the Fed scrambles to get ahead of high inflation. Senators voted 80-19 to approve Powell for another four-year stint chairing the Fed board, a position he was first appointed to by former President Trump.

Powell, a Republican, joined the Fed board in 2012 on the appointment of former President Obama and was picked by Trump in 2017 to succeed now-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

President Biden touted Powell's leadership of the Fed and its results for the economy when he renominated the Fed chief in November. Despite pressure from his left flank to replace Powell with a bona fide liberal who would tighten bank rules, Biden said it was essential to preserve "Stability and independence" on the Fed board as inflation rose far faster than most economists expected.

The Senate this week also confirmed Biden's nominations of Michigan State economics professor Lisa Cook and Davidson College Vice President Philip Jefferson as members of the Fed board. The Senate last month confirmed Fed board member Lael Brainard to serve as vice-chair of the board of governors.

May 12: Experts warn overturning Roe would hit poor people hardest

Experts say overturning Roe v. Wade would likely have a disproportionate impact on lower-income households and people of color, warning the most vulnerable Americans to stand to bear outsized costs from added barriers to abortion access. Doing so would leave decisions on whether to limit or ban abortions up to states, which experts warn will hit poor people, with fewer resources to travel for access to the procedure, the hardest.

"A Roe reversal is going to create a situation that dramatically increases inequality and abortion access," said Caitlin Myers, an economics professor at Middlebury College who specializes in research on the effects of reproductive policies.

The abortion advocacy group Guttmacher Institute counts nearly two dozen states with legislation that could be used to curtail access, more than half of which have so-called trigger laws that would take effect swiftly in the event Roe is repealed.

A study released by the Brookings Institution in 2015 found that low-income people were more than five times as likely to have an unintended birth as affluent people, and data gathered in the Guttmacher Institute's 2014 Abortion Patient Survey found the percentage of abortion patients living below the federal poverty line had increased from 42 to 47 percent since 2008.

While some experts say rolling back abortion rights could knock people out of the labor force, Rachel Greszler, a senior research fellow on budget and entitlements at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation, pushed back in an interview on arguments that a Roe reversal would cost the economy.

Texas A&M's Lindo argued, that a "Bigger economy itself is also not always desirable," noting "More people does typically mean higher GDPs, but it does not necessarily mean higher GDP per capita, which I think most people would say is a better measure of the overall health of an economy."

May 11: Senate confirms Biden’s FTC nominee

The Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to confirm Alvaro Bedoya, President Biden's nominee to fill the fifth seat on the Federal Trade Commission, with Vice President Harris casting the tie-breaking 51st vote.

"With the FTC at full membership, this important agency will be empowered to drive full steam ahead in cracking down on bad actor companies who are using anti-competitive practices, inflation, and price manipulation to bilk consumers and drive up profits," Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer said in a statement.

Bedoya's confirmation will break a 2-2 deadlock that has limited the FTC since the beginning of Biden's term. The votes to advance him through committee and then for confirmation in the Senate's full chamber were delayed multiple times because of cases of COVID-19 that kept Democrats from having the votes needed to secure his appointment.

"Today's vote sends a clear message to businesses of all sizes: buckle up," said Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the Chamber of Commerce. "Chair Khan now has the potential third vote she needs to unleash greater uncertainty - the enemy of business growth and opportunity - on the economy," he added.

For Fun: 

May 11: Moon Will Turn Red During Total Lunar Eclipse This Sunday Night

The first total lunar eclipse of 2022 is about to dye the moon red on Sunday night. In the case of a total lunar eclipse, the Earth intercedes between the sun and the moon. Total solar eclipses, on the other hand, take place during new moons, when the moon slips between Earth and the sun.

The total lunar eclipse will begin as an unremarkable "Penumbral" lunar eclipse - a subtle darkening hardly perceptible to the untrained observer. Maximum eclipse comes when the moon is most firmly burrowed within Earth's shadow, immersed in nothing but eerie red light.

The color of a lunar eclipse actually varies depending on how polluted the atmosphere is; astronomers rate the tonal hues on the Danjon Scale, for which a zero corresponds to a hardly visible eclipse and a four represents a coppery-rust one. Lunar eclipses can be visible from the entire night side of Earth since the moon is visible from anywhere.