Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown have called for an investigation of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This comes as a response to a ProPublica article by Jake Bernstein, true yeoman’s work, that exposes an all-too-cozy relationship between the Fed and Goldman Sachs. Relying on secret recordings made by a former Fed compliance attorney, he writes: […]
Monthly Archives: September 2014
Banks don’t “lend out” excess reserves
I recently came across this S&P report by S&P’s Chief Global Economist Paul Sheard debunking common misunderstandings about the Federal Reserve, QE and excess reserves. I’m posting it here to clear up misinformation about what banks do with their excess reserves at the Fed. I’ve definitely been led astray in the past by economists regarding this […]
Up stocks, down fixed-capital
Thad Beversdorf with a nice piece at Voices of Libertyon why the Fed is destroying the middle class. However, we have to remember that at the end of the day corporations are just money allocators like any hedge fund or mutual fund manager. CEOs are sworn to maximize shareholder funds. Understanding this we must expect corporations to invest […]
Another quibble with incentive talk
Matt McCaffrey has an interesting post on incentives over at the Mises Economics Blog. He writes: Nevertheless, emphasizing incentives too much glosses over several problems: economic laws can make incentives irrelevant; incentives are in any case too narrow a concept to be the defining characteristic of economics; focus on incentives sometimes leads to a paternalistic view […]
Rogoff on the exaggerated death of inflation
Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff writing on the “exaggerated death” of inflation. I am not arguing that inflation will return anytime soon in safe-haven economies such as the US or Japan. Though US labor markets are tightening, and the new Fed chair has emphatically emphasized the importance of maximum employment, there is still little risk of […]
ISIS, meet Mises?
John Tamny has a great column over at Forbes that pinpoints my exact frustrations with reporting on ISIS and its supposed threat to our national security. He writes: In reality, the entity that has left and right up in arms in search of a muscular response was born in a part of the world that […]
The Ebola epidemic is getting worse
According to Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Liberia has only 250 doctors left in the wake of the growing Ebola epidemic. The country’s population tops 4 million. From the New York Times : Because people are now too afraid of contracting Ebola to go […]
Learn about banking from Salman Khan
No, not the Bollywood superstar. Here’s Salman Khan the educator teaching us about the multiplier effect and the money supply. I’m reposting this because I’m finding a lot of misinformation about the multiplier effect online as I’m researching for an upcoming report on the money multiplier. I’ll link to that report here once it’s published.
Even more thoughts on incentives
The topic of the War in Afghanistan came up at a recent seminar I attended. One participant claimed that President Obama pulled the troops out of Afghanistan because of political pressure. Everyone quickly nodded in agreement as he continued with the rest of his comments. This reminded me of the argument that politicians increase spending […]
Blowback in Syria?
From Abigail Hall, writing in The Beacon this morning regarding President Obama’s plan to arm “moderate” Syrian rebels: Syria’s regime is unfriendly to the U.S. The country is in the midst of an ongoing civil war with a death toll considered tragic on any margin. But the idea that the U.S. can arm rebels and keep […]