Central Banking
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“Gold and Economic Freedom”
“An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense – perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire – that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and…
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“Belongia on the Fed”
“Michael Belongia of the University of Mississippi and former economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the inner workings, politics, and economics of the Federal Reserve. Belongia talks about the role that power and politics play in Federal Reserve decision-making and how various Fed chairs used their power…
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“Inflation Alert”
“The 1970s was a decade of stagflation — the concurrence of a rising inflation rate and stagnant economic growth. The U.S. economy has not now reached the double-digit inflation rate (almost 15% by 1981), or the 9% unemployment rate, experienced back then. But the early ’70s, not the decade’s end, offer the more ominous parallels…
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“Greenspan’s Monetary Policy in Retrospect”
“Critics charge Greenspan with having carried on an excessively expansionary monetary policy, particularly following the recession of 2001. They note how low interest rates were from 2002 through 2004 and argue that those low rates paved the way for everything from high prices at the pump to high prices at the supermarket, from the housing…
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“The Fed’s Great Rate Debate”
“There are plenty of experts who argue that the Fed should move sooner rather than later to raise the federal funds rate, its key lending rate that is used as a benchmark for the interest paid on credit cards, home equity loans and many business loans. Keeping that rate, also known as the fed funds…
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The Signals of the Fed
The Fed made what it claims is a minimal change in strategy today, as it raised the emergency loan rate today from 0.5%. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Fed said the move wasn’t meant to affect monetary policy…” Yet in a realm as dependent upon expectations as monetary policy, how could a marked…
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Will Bernanke’s Exit Strategy Work?
“On Wednesday, February 10, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was expected to appear before the House Committee on Financial Services to testify on the Fed’s extraordinary measures taken during the financial crisis, and how the Fed is planning to unwind them. Though cancelled by the “snowmageddon” that hit the DC area, has been published on…
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“Stagflation Comes to the U.K.”
“Inflation in the U.K. hit 3.5% annually in January, a level that required central banker Mervyn King to write a letter of explanation to the Treasury. Mr. King lays the blame for the price uptick largely at the feet of idiosyncratic factors. These include the Jan. 1 increase in the VAT rate to 17.5% from…
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“Financial Crises and the Federal Reserve’s Punch Bowl”
“Why did the U.S. financial system nearly collapse last year? People blame Wall Street’s excessive greed and risk-taking. But without easy money, the massive risk-taking could not have happened. To be sure, financial firms leveraged up—that is, they did a lot of business with borrowed money. That juiced up revenues and bonuses in the boom—and…
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The Yo-Yo Tactic: Stop and Go Economics
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke commented on his “exit strategy”. There is a large amount of money floating around in the economy, and the Fed is finally starting to worry about it. Thus far, banks have held back the flow by keeping high reserves, but as Bernanke says in his…
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It’s October 1931
“We are now more than two years into the Great Recession, which began in December 2007. In the Great Depression, this was the point where the Fed decided to raise interest rates to keep the dollar from depreciating (after Britain left the gold standard.) Mr. Bullard of the St. Louis Fed wants to see “at…
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“Shughart: Bernanke agonistes”
“Mr. Bernanke has become something of a lightning rod for critics on the left, who think his response to the financial crisis that triggered the recession has been too timid, and for those on the right, who charge that the Fed has been overly aggressive and will be unable to unwind its easy-money policy and…