President Trump's nomination of Jerome Powell as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve System is a bet that he will continue Janet Yellen's policies and not rock financial markets. The expectation is that Powell will follow the Fed's already-announced normalization schedule, which calls for slowly reducing…
The president just announced his pick to chair the Federal Reserve System. Subject to Senate confirmation, current Fed governor Jerome "Jay" Powell will succeed Janet Yellen as Fed chair in February 2018. Market reaction to this announcement has been sanguine, with commentators describing Powell as the "continuity candidate."…
China-based cryptocurrency exchange BTCC suspended all domestic trading in yuan last weekend. The decision came on the heels of a September 5 statement from regulatory authorities in China, which required all domestic cryptocurrency exchanges publish closing announcements, stop registering new users, and establish a schedule to cease…
In a note to my last post, I observed that Liberty Street Economics, the blog of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, promised a follow-up to its post concerning the advantages of the Fed's interest payments on required reserves. The follow up would address the benefits of…
Dormant for a while, the debate over India's demonetization program of last fall has been revived by new evidence. The new evidence on note returns and GDP vindicates the critics, and has the defenders in strategic retreat. To recap: On November 8, 2016, India's Prime Minister Narendra…