This essay, the first of a series on government efforts to bank the "unbanked," reviews the history of postal banking and its deleterious role in the Great Depression. Subsequent posts will discuss contemporary proposals for government involvement in retail banking, such as through the U.S. Postal Service…
The Fall 2020 issue of the Cato Journal covers several key topics in monetary policy: (1) the risk to the Federal Reserve's independence and credibility as it drifts into fiscal policy; (2) the effectiveness of negative interest rates as a tool of monetary policy; (3) the impact…
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…
Although dedicated Fed watchers long saw it coming, the big news from Jackson Hole is that the Fed now has a new monetary policy strategy—the crowning achievement of the much-ballyhooed review of its "Strategy, Tools, and Communications" it launched in early 2019. It's called "average inflation targeting,"…