All Posts Tagged With: "Federal Reserve"
Destroying Value
In Cleveland and other American cities homes are being demolished because five years after the housing bust there is nothing better to do with them. Therein lies a lesson in Austrian business cycle theory. In a world of uncertainty, waste—the destruction of value—is inevitable. Human action, which aims to replace inferior circumstances with superior circumstances, [...]
4Jan2012 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedA Return to Gold?
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. . . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society. . . .The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the [...]
30Nov2011 | and John L. Chapman | 13 comments | ContinuedUnemployment: What’s To Be Done?
In Part 1 I outlined natural unemployment, government-caused unemployment, and the attempts to measure these. We saw how ambiguous and subjective some of the concepts of unemployment are and how the government, specifically the Federal Reserve, is charged with managing it. Now we turn to current conditions and what can be done about them. There [...]
30Nov2011 | Warren C. Gibson | 6 comments | ContinuedCrisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance
Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm’s book on the great subprime crisis gets off to a good start by dismissing as a red herring the “tired” argument attributing the boom to “greed” and focusing instead on “changes in the structure of incentives . . . that channeled greed in new and dangerous directions.” These included programs [...]
30Nov2011 | George A. Selgin | 2 comments | ContinuedFed Secretly Bails Out Big Banks
From Bloomberg: Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing. The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so [...]
29Nov2011 | Sheldon Richman | 23 comments | ContinuedQuantitative Easing Forever?
Despite assertions that it has ended its policy of quantitative easing (QE), the Fed is unlikely to be able to do so until it also ends its zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP). This deadly policy duo has had terrible consequences for the American economy and every country using U.S. dollars. It is as though the Fed were [...]
26Oct2011 | Christopher Lingle | 1 comment | ContinuedThe New Fed
“Things are seldom what they seem.” —W. S. Gilbert, “H.M.S. Pinafore” Nowhere is this more true than in government, which means we have to watch it closely. Unfortunately preconceived notions can make us impervious to events right in front of us and lead us to colossal misperceptions. Take the Federal Reserve System. (All together now: [...]
21Sep2011 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedHayek Unsung
George Selgin brings to our attention this New York Times article highlighting the unorthodox views of Thomas M. Hoenig, the outgoing president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. As Selgin notes, the article contains this: “The central bank has to be, in a way, a neutral player, and yet we find ourselves trying [...]
17Aug2011 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedQuantitative Easing Forever?
In the end both quantitative easing and the zero-interest-rate policy have been ineffective in restoring economic vitality while also creating a massive overhang of repressed inflation.
10Aug2011 | Christopher Lingle | 7 comments | ContinuedFed Watch
The U.S. Federal Reserve gave out $16.1 trillion in emergency loans to U.S. and foreign financial institutions between Dec. 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010, according to figures produced by the government’s first-ever audit of the central bank. –The Raw Story HT: Ken Sturzenacker
22Jul2011 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat’s Up with Inflation?
Inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has been almost nonexistent for several years, though it started creeping higher in the first half of 2011. Yet many prices have been rising at double-digit percentage rates. Are official figures trustworthy? And what of expectations? There is a great deal of buzz right now about inflation [...]
22Jun2011 | Warren C. Gibson | 14 comments | ContinuedPrivate Investment and Public “Investment”
Politicians are fond of telling the public that we must “invest” in this program or that—be it education; health care; make-work infrastructure projects like the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere”; $50 million for an indoor rainforest in Iowa; $3.4 million for a tunnel to allow turtles to cross under a highway in Florida; $1.8 million for swine [...]
22Jun2011 | Adam B. Summers | 1 comment | 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 | ContinuedInflation Isn’t Coming?
Libertarian columnist Stephen Chapman sounds a dissenting note against the warnings of an approaching price inflation: There is no indication that inflation is heating up this time, either. Investors wouldn’t be snapping up three-year Treasury notes at 1 percent if they were expecting their purchasing power to be ravaged by wolves any moment now…. The [...]
14May2011 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedQuantitative Uneasiness
In their recent paper, “Has the Fed Been a Failure?,” George A. Selgin, William D. Lastrapes, and Lawrence H. White conclude that over nearly 100 years the Federal Reserve’s performance has been mostly awful. Unfortunately, the Fed is currently engaged in a policy that will likely make a nice addition to their article. This policy, [...]
21Apr2011 | Ivan Pongracic Jr. | 36 comments | ContinuedWho Owns the Fed?
Have you heard? The Federal Reserve System raked in profits of $79.3 billion last year, almost triple what runner-up ExxonMobil made. The Fed’s business model is a snap—just print money—and unlike poor beleaguered Exxon, the Fed has no competition to worry about. This means a gigantic windfall for the big banks because, although they don’t [...]
21Apr2011 | Warren C. Gibson | 18 comments | ContinuedA Simple Solution
By overriding market money prices we deny ourselves important data about the country’s fiscal health.
11Apr2011 | Richard W. Fulmer | 3 comments | Continued-
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