So far as some people are concerned, when it comes to bashing economists, any old stick will do. That, at least, seems to be true of those anthropologists and fellow-travelers who imagine that, in demonstrating that certain forms of credit must be older than either monetary exchange…
Last month, the Treasury Department announced new steps to boost the market for private mortgage bonds, not backed by the government or any federal entity, in order to increase homeownership and improve access to credit for working-class Americans who might be having trouble borrowing money to buy a house….
Henry James, T.S. Elliot famously remarked, "Had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it." Similarly, more than a few economics papers involve formal models so fine that no facts can violate them. Two recent examples purport to demonstrate the instability and inefficiency of "private…
A large crowd gathered late afternoon Tuesday at Cato for Quantitative Easing: A Requiem. Daniel Thornton, former Vice President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve, Scott Sumner, Chair of Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center, and Joseph Gagnon, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics gave…
The New York Times reported last week on some of the details of the Obama Administration’s recovery plan for Puerto Rico, and it does not bode well for investors — or for states and municipalities that borrow money. The island’s government is $72 billion in debt, with…