Is it reasonable to worry about inflation in the current environment?
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
How the Federal Reserve earned its profit
I was curious to take a look at the details behind the following story:
The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday announced preliminary unaudited results indicating that the Reserve Banks provided for payments of approximately $46.1 billion of their estimated 2009 net income of $52.1 billion to the U.S. Treasury. This represents a $14.4 billion increase over the 2008 results.
Haiti relief efforts
One of the organizations to which I have made a contribution is Heart to Heart International.
Links for 2010-01-13
Stuart Staniford, who earlier had been persuaded that global oil production might have already peaked, now comments on the potential for increased production from Iraq to push the peak up to a decade down the road.
King Banaian on disturbing developments in Argentina and Venezuela.
Economists comment on the role of the Fed in the housing bubble. Two in particular worth emphasizing:
Marvin Goodfriend: Interest rate policy was appropriately stimulative in the 2002-3 period. But rates should have been raised less mechanically and more aggressively in 2004-5 on grounds of the usual macroeconomic conditions…. A somewhat tighter stance of interest rate policy then could have cut off the last year or so of the house price appreciation and prevented the worst part of the subsequent adjustment.
Mark Gertler: If we could go back in history and make one policy change, I’d go after sub-prime lending. Absent non-prime lending, the likely outcome of the housing correction of 2007 would have been a mild recession like 2000-2001, and not the debacle we experienced.
More of the same
The U.S. economy continues to recover at a painfully slow pace.
Bernanke grades the Fed
Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s observations on monetary policy and the housing bubble have received a lot of attention. Like many other commentators (e.g., Arnold Kling, Paul Krugman, and Free Exchange), I agree with Bernanke’s conclusions, but only up to a point.
Inflation in China
Why hasn’t inflation caught up with a monetary-induced boom in China?
Term deposit facility
On Monday the Federal Reserve proposed a new term deposit facility that would allow the Fed to borrow directly from private institutions. Here I offer some thoughts on how this fits into the Fed’s long-term plans and what its implications for the rest of us might be.
Lost decade for stocks
Why were the aughts so nasty for stocks?
Podcast on the federal debt
EconTalk hosts a podcast of a conversation I had with
George Mason Professor Russ Roberts on deficits and the debt. At the end we also get to a discussion of oil markets. You can participate in the discussion with your own comments either here or over at EconTalk.