Topic: Monetary Policy

“Federal Reserve State of Play”

– October 20, 2010

“For many, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s speech at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank conference last Friday confirmed expectations that renewed quantitative easing will definitely be approved at the Nov. 2-3 Federal Open Market Committee meeting. “QE2” adv …

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“Politics and the Fed”

– October 20, 2010

“The threat of politicization hangs over the Federal Reserve Board like the Sword of Damocles. It’s Capitol Hill’s response to the Fed’s proliferation of new programs to unglue credit markets. The Fed’s innovations threaten to create enough acronyms to …

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“The Fed and Politics”

– October 20, 2010

“Politically oriented monetary policies and business cycles are the inevitable by-products of a central bank, the ultimate favored banking institution which is viewed as a savior by some politicians facing elections. After the elections comes the bill: …

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“100 Percent Reserve Money: The Small Change Challenge” – George Selgin

– October 20, 2010

“In a free market economy from which fiduciary media are excluded, economic progress will be limited, perhaps severely, by the high cost and correspondingly limited supply of small-denomination money—money that is needed to accomplish retail and other …

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“How the Fed Is Holding Back Recovery” – David Malpass

– October 19, 2010

“Whether in Republican or Democratic administrations, the Washington policy consensus for a decade has been “print and spend.” When that doesn’t work, the Washington prescription is to double the dose—more monetary easing and dollar devaluation, and al …

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“Money and Finance in the Confederate States of America”

– October 18, 2010

“The Confederacy then turned to debt issue as a means of war finance. The South successfully sold some long-term government securities during the early stages of the war. Bond issues proved a limited source of war financing as Southern prospects dimini …

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Currency Chaos: Where Do We Go From Here? – Judy Shelton

– October 16, 2010

‘The most important initiative you could take to improve the world economy would be to stabilize the dollar-euro rate.’Global monetary relations are in disarray. Exchange rates fluctuate wildly among the world’s major trade partners, spawning talk of p …

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Limited Purpose Banking?

– October 16, 2010

by Jerry O’Driscoll The following is a book review from the Cato Journal, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Fall 2010). Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World’s Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking Laurence J. Kotlikoff (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & …

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“Bernanke says Federal Reserve ready to further stimulate the economy”

– October 15, 2010

“Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke on Friday laid out a case for the central bank to take further action to bolster growth, citing the risks of prolonged high unemployment and a U.S. economy slipping into a deflationary spiral. In a much-anticip …

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Robust Political Economy and the Fed – Peter Boettke

– October 14, 2010

“But I wonder if in these discussions of monetary policy in response to the financial crisis the political economy of public policy is not seriously being overlooked. I have in fact raised these concerns before, and while the political economy costs ar …

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How Fake Money Saved Brazil – NPR

– October 14, 2010

“This is a story about how an economist and his buddies tricked the people of Brazil into saving the country from rampant inflation. They had a crazy, unlikely plan, and it worked. Twenty years ago, Brazil’s inflation rate hit 80 percent per month. At …

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“Why Inflation Matters” – Steven Horwitz

– October 13, 2010

From our friends at the Mercatus Center: “Although it has yet to make an appearance on the current economic scene, inflation continues to be a ghost that haunts the future of the U.S. economy. The Federal Reserve System has pumped an unprecedented amou …

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