The Fed giveth and the Treasury taketh away.
Category Archives: Federal Reserve
The Fed stands pat, at least for now
Today’s statement from the FOMC, the decision-making body for the Federal Reserve, basically said that, yes, the economy has worsened since the FOMC’s previous meeting, but no, they’re not going to do anything about it. At least, not right now.
Is QE3 coming?
Conditions have changed since January, and we might expect some additional stimulus from the Fed at the next FOMC meeting.
Guest Contribution: The Fed Shirks Its Duties
Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Joseph E. Gagnon of the Peterson Institute of International Economics.
Europe in 1931
I was at a conference at the Cato Institute two weeks ago discussing some research by Dartmouth Professor Doug Irwin on the role of the gold standard in the Great Depression of 1929-1933. If you’re interested, you can see a written version of my comments, the slides from my presentation, or a video of the session (my comments begin a little more than half way in). Here I’d like to relate some of the discussion of what happened in Europe in 1931, and comment on some of the parallels with what is going on today.
Options for Europe
This problem is not fixing itself.
Markets see bad news
May was a bad month for U.S. stocks. June started out worse, with the S&P500 on Friday down 9% from where it stood at the beginning of May. That puts us back about where we started the year in January, though still significantly above last fall’s lows.
Yes, the Fed could produce a higher inflation rate
From the responses to my remarks last week on monetary policy, I see that my words were interpreted by some readers differently than I’d intended, for which I apologize. Let me try again.
Should the Fed do more?
Johns Hopkins University Professor Larry Ball, Princeton Professor Paul Krugman, U.C. Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong, University of Oregon Professor Tim Duy and Texas State University Professor David Beckworth are among those recently arguing that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is neglecting his own earlier academic insights into what the central bank should be doing in a situation such as the United States presently finds itself. Here’s what I think they’re overlooking.
Disentangling the channels of the 2007-2009 recession
Harvard Professor James Stock and Princeton Professor Mark Watson presented a very interesting paper last week at the Spring 2012 Conference for the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Their paper studied similarities and differences between the 2007-2009 recession and other U.S. business cycles.