Founded by Cato’s vice president for monetary studies James A. Dorn in 1983, the Cato Institute’s Annual Monetary Conference has kept the monetary policy conversation alive in Washington, DC, for nearly four decades — even at times when a calcified consensus made the topic seem unimportant. The…
Last week, I had the pleasure of addressing the Michigan Credit Union Economic Summit on the future of financial services. I discussed emergent themes in financial regulation as a result of new technologies, and their implications for the industry. Here are my remarks — I hope you…
In my last post I wrote about the lawsuit TNB USA Inc has filed against the New York Fed, which has refused to grant the would-be bank a Master Account. I argued that, despite its name (TNB stands for "The Narrow Bank"), and despite what some commentators…
Last weekend the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City hosted its annual symposium in Jackson Hole. Despite being the Fed’s largest annual event, the symposium has been “fairly boring” for years, in terms of what can be learned about the future of actual policy. This year’s program,…
German foreign minister Heiko Maas recently penned an article in which he said that "it’s essential that we strengthen European autonomy by establishing payment channels that are independent of the US, creating a European Monetary Fund and building up an independent Swift system." So what exactly is Maas's quibble…