The Federal Reserve can’t be entirely pleased with markets’ reaction to its announcement on Wednesday of quantitative goals for purchases of long-term assets.
Category Archives: inflation
Quantitative easing
The U.S. Federal Reserve yesterday finally took the step many of us had been urging for some time.
Deflation risk down but not out
While this week brought some pretty frightening numbers on industrial production and manufacturing surveys, I viewed Friday’s CPI release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics as slightly encouraging.
The Treasury’s Financial Stability Plan
Here’s my two cents on the latest two trillion.
Quantitative easing
Today’s announcement from the Federal Reserve marks the end of the road for Plan A (fighting the recession by lowering interest rates), and the beginning of … what?
TIPS yields
Greg Mankiw notes some odd behavior this week in the values reported by the U.S. Treasury for the yields on constant-maturity Treasury Inflation Protected Securities.
Time for a change at the Fed
Plan A didn’t work. Plan B didn’t work. I suggest the Fed get going on Plan C.
Deflation risk
There are plenty of things to worry about in the current economic situation. But deflation isn’t one of them.
Shadowstats responds
Last month I called attention to an analysis by BLS researchers John Greenlees and Robert McClelland of some of the claims by John Williams of Shadowstats about the consequences for reported inflation of assorted technical decisions made by the BLS. Williams asked me to update with a link to his response to the BLS study. I am happy to do so, along with offering some further observations of my own.
What happened to oil markets on Monday?
Here’s how it was reported, for example, in the Wall Street Journal:
Reaction to the Wall Street bailout and frenzied last-minute trading in the oil market sent crude prices soaring by more than $16 a barrel, the biggest one-day jump ever.
The late-day spike, which shoved oil up 16% to $120.92 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, offered an illustration of Wall Street’s hard-to-predict moves amid broad market turmoil.
And here’s what really happened.