Yesterday morning I was very pleased to encounter, in The Wall Street Journal, a report by Brian Blackstone on deflation in Switzerland. In it Blackstone observes that the Swiss case appears to contradict the widespread belief among economists ("as close to an economic consensus as you can get,"…
Back in August I wrote here about the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's refusal to grant a master account, and to thereby allow access to the Fed's payment facilities, to The Fourth Corner Credit Union (TFCCU), a Colorado-based credit union intended to serve as a banker…
The FOMC decided last week against raising interest rates given its concerns about the global economy and financial conditions. While these concerns are reasonable, the FOMC’s decision highlights a growing problem that has increasingly plagued the Fed since the crisis erupted: its incredibly ad-hoc approach to monetary policy….
For all the ink spilled on TARP — the bailout package authorizing the Treasury to purchase or insure up to $700 billion of “troubled assets” during the financial crisis — that program is dwarfed by another market intervention that occurred around the same time. In fact, the Government…
Some influential developers of the software that runs Bitcoin have proposed an important amendment to the functioning of the leading cryptocurrency. It's a development as important to Bitcoin as a constitutional amendment aimed at the Fed would be to the dollar. The debate has been characterized in…