All Posts Tagged With: "Ben Bernanke"
Contradicting Keynes: Bernanke’s Debt Default Scare
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s remarks last summer about the debt limit and risk of default amounted to a stunning contradiction of Keynes and Keynesian economics. But few seem to have noticed. In response to questions by U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), Bernanke joined in the chorus of those predicting skyrocketing interest rates in the [...]
21Sep2011 | James C. W. Ahiakpor | 1 comment | ContinuedContradicting Keynes: Bernanke’s Debt Default Scare
Did the person supposedly in charge of determining interest rates in the United States through Federal Reserve credit creation really say that?
27Jul2011 | James C. W. Ahiakpor | 9 comments | ContinuedMoney and Inflation: What’s Going On in the World?
Are America and the world at risk for another inflationary episode similar to the 1970s and early 1980s? Or do current low rates of inflation portend low inflation for the foreseeable future? David Wessel revisited this question in his “Capital” column in the February 24, 2011, Wall Street Journal. He correctly stated that the Federal [...]
25May2011 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 6 comments | ContinuedDefining “Terrorism” Down
If Bernard von NotHaus did anything, he exposed the sorry fact that U.S. money is hopelessly debased. If that is proof of terrorism, then anyone who openly criticizes this government and its money is a terrorist.
30Mar2011 | William L. Anderson | 2 comments | ContinuedMoney, Inflation, and Rising World Commodity Prices
Chairman Bernanke is being disingenuous about the options foreign central banks and governments have to counteract the Fed’s easy-money policy that threatens a global outbreak of inflation similar to the 1970s.
28Feb2011 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 6 comments | ContinuedAnd the Slump Goes On
Official economic statistics and the underlying economic reality sometimes differ starkly. Such discrepancies may be almost inevitable when a small group of macroeconomic experts sets the official dates for peaks and troughs of aggregate economic activity. The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) recently “determined that a trough in [...]
24Feb2011 | Angel Martín Oro | 13 comments | ContinuedInflating Our Way to Prosperity?
As more and more money is pumped into the economy, not only do prices go up, but so do inflationary expectations.
10Nov2010 | William L. Anderson | 9 comments | ContinuedBoom and Bust: Crisis and Response
America has experienced a classic economic boom and bust, which I first chronicled in the November 2007 Freeman. Ill-conceived policies to encourage homeownership channeled cheap credit into housing markets. Land-use and zoning policies restricted the supply of housing in key desirable markets. In The Housing Boom and Bust, Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution has [...]
24Feb2010 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedA Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression
Richard Posner’s latest book belongs to the fast-expanding cottage industry of financial crisis books. A federal judge with a grounding in economics, Posner would seem to be an ideal person to tackle this complicated subject. Alas, he provides neither fresh material nor an interesting perspective. Posner describes well-known events—the failure of investment banks Bear Stearns [...]
5Jan2010 | Chidem Kurdas | 1 comment | ContinuedFinancial 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 [...]
18Nov2009 | Chidem Kurdas | 12 comments | ContinuedRegulating Executive Pay Can Reduce Systemic Risk
Late last month White House pay czar Ken Feinberg unveiled executive pay rules for 175 key players in the nation’s seven-firm TARP-assisted sector. The new rules generated different bundles of base and incentive pay for the affected executives, along with a good bit of grumbling and grousing. Unsullied by the frowns and accompanying warnings that [...]
4Nov2009 | Bruce Yandle | 23 comments | ContinuedBen Bernanke Saved the Day?
Instead of being “brave,” Bernanke has been reckless, just like a young driver playing “chicken.” There is a huge difference between bravery and bravado, and Bernanke’s actions reflect the latter not the former.
28Oct2009 | William L. Anderson | 3 comments | ContinuedThe Financial Bailouts: “See the Needle and the Damage Done”
On Wednesday, September 17, 2008, according to the New York Times, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke used “a speaker phone from his ornate office” to tell Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson “that it was time to adopt a comprehensive strategy that Congress would have to approve” for dealing with the financial-market troubles. After a second call on [...]
27Feb2009 | Lawrence H. White | 13 comments | ContinuedSubprime Monetary Policy
In recent years monetary policy has been conducted so as to create an expectation that the Federal Reserve will bail out investors when asset bubbles deflate. Investors have come to bank on the Fed’s backing of risky ventures. The recent crisis in the subprime mortgage market is at least partly the outcome of this new [...]
1Nov2007 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Great Depression According to Milton Friedman
The author extends special thanks to Lawrence H. White and Ivan Pongracic, Sr., for their helpful comments. Few events in U.S. history can rival the Great Depression for its impact. The period from 1929 to 1941 saw fundamental changes in the landscape of American politics and economics, including such monumental events as America ‘s going [...]
1Sep2007 | Ivan Pongracic Jr. | 77 comments | ContinuedWhy Not Monetary Freedom?
In all of the commentaries that have appeared since President George W. Bush nominated Dr. Ben S. Bernanke as Alan Greenspan
1Dec2005 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued-
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