Of many interesting things said during Cato's 36th Monetary Conference, one in particular tempted me to rush to the podium to give its author a big hug. The speaker, Joe Gagnon of the Peterson Institute, was calling into question the now-conventional wisdom that, to avoid interfering with…
Dedicated Alt-M readers may recall my having reported here several years ago the suit filed by Colorado's Four Corner's Credit Union against the Kansas City Fed — after the Fed refused it a Master Account on the grounds that it planned to cater to Colorado's marijuana-related businesses….
The Italian general elections of March 4, 2018 have produced an improbable coalition government between two upstart populist parties: left-Eurosceptic-nationalist Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement) and the right-Eurosceptic-nationalist Lega (League). The coalition partners agree on greater public spending and, at the same time, on tax cuts…
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…
Introduction Understanding what caused the Great Depression of 1929-39 and why it persisted so long has been fairly characterized by Ben Bernanke as the “Holy Grail of Macroeconomics.” The fear that the financial crisis of 2008 would lead to a similar Depression induced the Fed to use…