Relax: the Fed isn't about to catch fire or melt. This isn't about that sort of warming. It's about a different, more benign sort of Fed warming that my pals at the Mercatus Center claim to have discerned. Still, I don't believe them. Call me a Fed…
On August 27, the FOMC announced a new "Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy," in which it replaced its earlier Taylor Rule strategy for controlling inflation with what might be called a "Semi-Wicksell Rule." Fed Chair Jerome Powell elaborated on the statement in a speech…
"Without Roosevelt's intervention, the economic recovery that lasted from 1933 to 1937 would have been weaker and shorter—-not unlike our own recovery after the Great Recession." (David Weiman, "Imagining a World without the New Deal," The Washington Post, August 12th, 2011.) *** In the previous installment to…
"In 1934, the government price of gold was increased to $35 per ounce, effectively increasing the gold on the Federal Reserve's balance sheets by 69 percent. This increase in assets allowed the Federal Reserve to further inflate the money supply." ("FDR takes United States off gold standard,"…
"The Lights Go Out in Lebanon as Financial Collapse Accelerates," declared a recent headline in The Washington Post. The headline refers specifically to worsening power outages but more generally to Lebanon's ongoing "economic implosion." This breakdown is due in large part to chaos in Lebanon's monetary and…