Topic: Monetary Policy

“Did Deregulation Cause the Financial Crises?”

– May 19, 2010

“The growing narrative in Washington is that a decades-long unraveling of the regulatory system allowed and encouraged Wall Street to excess, resulting in the current financial crisis. Left unchallenged, this narrative will likely form the basis of any …

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“Fed Will Hold Interest Rates – And Inflation Will Rise”

– May 19, 2010

“Early this year, it was our belief (and forecast) that the Federal Reserve would start lifting interest rates from their current level of near zero by mid-year 2010. Our view has been that 0% interest rates are too low, that the economy would be (and …

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“Financial Regulation Bill Will Hurt Main Street”

– May 19, 2010

“The U.S. Congress should be forced to take the same oath that doctors take to “first do no harm.” Because more often than not, under the guise of “fixing” a problem, Washington makes things much, much worse for hard-working middle-class families and s …

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“The Great Chinese Inflation”

– May 19, 2010

“Inflations have undermined the cultural and economic fabric of society, bringing social chaos and revolution. One example is the Great Chinese Inflation of the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, the destruction of the Chinese monetary system during this period …

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Inflation Destroys Savings

– May 19, 2010

“Everything that is done by a government against the purchasing power of the monetary unit is, under present conditions, done against the middle classes and the working classes of the population. Only these people don’t know it. And this is the tragedy …

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The Return of British Stagflation?

– May 19, 2010

The UK inflation rate jumped to 3.7 percent last month, way above the Bank of England’s 2 percent target. This comes as a surprise to both the monetary policymakers of the BoE and to the newly formed coalition government. The Bank’s Governor Mervyn Kin …

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“Roberts on the Crises”

– May 19, 2010

“Russ Roberts, host of EconTalk, discusses his paper, “Gambling with Other People’s Money: How Perverted Incentives Created the Financial Crisis.” Roberts reflects on the past eighteen months of podcasts on the crisis, and then turns to his own take, a …

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“The Great 18-Year Real Estate Cycle”

– May 18, 2010

“On January 3rd, US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke delivered a major speech at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association. In his formal paper, “Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble,” Chairman Bernanke argues that the Fed’s mon …

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Stephen Roach Calls for a New Monetary Policy Regime

– May 18, 2010

Stephen Roach, Chief Economist of Morgan Stanley, have been a critic of the Fed for many years. In a Financial Times op-ed he makes the case for exiting the current monetary policy regime once and for all: “it is high time to banish the moral hazard of …

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“Venezuela’s Monetary Mayhem”

– May 17, 2010

“Anchoring the currency to the dollar and thus outsourcing monetary policy to the U.S. Federal Reserve had been a success, but special interests and politicians could not bear that it robbed them of power. Venezuela is another place where the politicia …

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Fed Monetary Dissident Thomas Hoenig

– May 17, 2010

Thomas Hoenig, a voting member of the Fed’s interest rate decision body, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), has on several occasions expressed concerns about the direction of U.S. monetary policy. During the last year, he has been a lone voice o …

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Shining a Light on the Fed

– May 14, 2010

Much has been made recently of the plan to audit the Fed (here, here and here). It is a very interesting idea. Given the amount of money ($2 trillion) the Fed sent out in bailout loans, it makes sense that the taxpayers who funded it want to know where …

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