As our more regular readers know well, every now and then I like to take another stab at debunking the myth that fractional reserve banking has fraudulent roots. Besides occurring in numerous textbooks, that myth is routinely expounded in the writings and lectures of certain contemporary Austrian School…
“… equally efficacious, and equally a hoax.” – Benjamin Disraeli, 1848[1] One of the highlights of the U.S. summer for Fed watchers is the annual ritual in which the Fed’s economic soothsayers peer into their crystal balls, a.k.a. their stress tests, to reassure us that the U.S. banking system…
Twice here on Alt-M, yours truly has reported on The Fourth Corner Credit Union's attempts to get the Kansas City Fed to grant it a master account, so that it could gain access to the Federal Reserve operated interbank payment and settlement system, and thereby supply ordinary…
As policymakers begin to rethink the current financial regulatory regime, it is important to reconsider the relation between banking regulation, financial stability, and economic vitality. With this in mind, we focused this year’s Cato Summit on Financial Regulation on banking and brought it to one of the…
In our recent American Banker opinion piece, Heritage's Norbert Michel and I argue that, if the Fed is really serious about shrinking its balance sheet, it had better quit paying interest on banks' excess reserves (IOER) as well. How come? Because the current, relatively high IOER rate …