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…
Lately the old-timers here at Cato's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives — which is to say, Jim Dorn and I — have been talking a lot about the Phillips Curve, which seems to be playing a part in monetary policy discussions today almost as big as…
Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that credit card provider American Express’ long-standing policy of including anti-“steering” clauses in its contracts with merchants was not anti-competitive. Steering is the practice whereby merchants discourage customers from paying with comparably high-cost cards like Amex and to use Visa or Mastercard…