All Posts Tagged With: "the Federal Reserve"

Mr. Market Miscalculates: The Bubble Years and Beyond

Veteran financial writer James Grant describes himself as a “Grover Cleveland Democrat”—that is, someone who believes strongly in sound money, free trade, and very limited government. Mr. Market Miscalculates is a collection of his essays published in “Grant’s Interest Rate Observer” over the last decade. While most financial writers credulously accept the notion that central [...]

24Apr2009 | George C. Leef | Comments Off | Continued

Too Big to Fail

“Once you lose your freedom to fail, you also lose your freedom to succeed and you cease to be a free society.” —U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas In March 2008 the investment banking firm Bear Sterns failed and the federal government quickly stepped in. The public was inundated with the phrase “too big to fail” [...]

2Mar2009 | Michael Heberling | 8 comments | Continued

Was Money Really Easy Under Greenspan?

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has become everyone’s favorite scapegoat. His policies allegedly caused, or at least contributed to, the current financial crisis. He is attacked from the left for lax financial regulation, from the right for loose monetary policy, and from the middle for both. Yet two years ago, on leaving office, Greenspan [...]

2Mar2009 | and and David R. Henderson | 7 comments | Continued

The Current Economic Crisis and the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle

Richard Ebeling is completing his tenure as the president of FEE. This fall he will teach economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. The current financial crisis emerged out of an economic boom that began in 2003 and saw rising stock values, increasing home prices, and high levels of employment and production. The upturn followed [...]

1Jun2008 | Richard M. Ebeling | 4 comments | Continued

Construction Boom and Bust Between the World Wars

Imagine a story about collapse of the real-estate markets that states: “Most of the millions piled up in paper profits had melted away, many of the millions sunk in developments had been sunk for good and all, the vast inverted pyramid of credit had toppled to earth, and the lesson of the economic falsity of [...]

1Jun2008 | Robert Higgs | 2 comments | Continued

Bailout Hypocrisy

Thud. That was the sound of the other shoe dropping. In response to severe problems in the credit markets, thanks to years of government intervention, the Federal Reserve—the government’s counterfeiter and chief culprit in the current crisis—has opened its discount window to the investment banks. Interest rate: 2.5 percent. Until recently, only commercial banks could [...]

1Jun2008 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued

The Fed Didn’t Bail Out Wall Street?

In his New York Times column (“It’s Monetary Policy, Not a Morality Play,” September 9, 2007), Tyler Cowen decried the clichéd pattern of casting all financial stories into “simple moral narratives.” Although many commentators have questioned the Fed’s handling of the credit crunch last August and September, Cowen sees no hanky-panky: Talk of a bailout [...]

1Jan2008 | Robert P. Murphy | 4 comments | Continued

Capital Letters

David Hume and Reason In the very title of his article in The Freeman of October 2007, Frank van Dun asks, “Can We Be Free If Reason Is the Slave of the Passions?” His article is uncommonly long and gauzy for a Freeman piece; and his citations to David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature are [...]

1Jan2008 | Frank van Dun | 0 comments | Continued

The Fed’s Potent Power

The Federal Reserve holds the fate of the U.S. economy in its hands. Or that’s the conclusion many observers draw when they watch investors react wildly to the most minute details of the Fed’s policy statements. This conclusion is at once exaggerated and accurate. It’s exaggerated because, at bottom, the Fed controls only the supply [...]

1Jan2007 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 1 comment | Continued

Book Reviews – September 2004

The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life by Paul Seabright Princeton University Press • 2004 • 304 pages • $29.95 Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling One of the most profound insights of economics is that the activities of billions of people can be coordinated without central direction and without most of these [...]

1Sep2004 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | Continued

Cashing a Cheque in the Third Millennium A.D.

Robert Wright is the author of six books about early U.S. financial history. He currently teaches business and financial history at the Stern School of Business, New York University. Several years ago I exported some of my intellectual services to a small publisher in London. I thought nothing of contracting in pound sterling. After all, [...]

1Apr2004 | Robert E. Wright | 0 comments | Continued

Ninety Years of Monetary Central Planning in the United States

Ninety years ago this month, on December 23, 1913, the Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, establishing a national central-banking system in the United States. The governing board of the Federal Reserve was organized on August 12, 1914, and the Federal Reserve banks opened for operation on November 16, 1914. On the surface, the preamble [...]

1Dec2003 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued

The Myth of the Independent Fed

Dr. DiLorenzo is a professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described itself as an independent agency operated by selfless public servants striving to fine-tune the economy through monetary policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental institution is as likely as a barking cat. Yet, [...]

1Apr1997 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo | 4 comments | Continued

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