"You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.” —the Good Witch of the East, to Dorothy, in The Wizard of Oz. (This is the conclusion of a two-part essay. For Part 1 click here.) Equipped with some historical background, we can now consider ways in…
"The FOMC should forget about r* for the moment and focus on … the supermassive black hole at the center of global dollar funding markets."—Zoltan Poszar, 21 August, 2019. A few weeks ago, as part of its effort to prevent overnight rates from rising above the Fed's…
Improving the Monetary System Since 1983, the Cato Institute’s Annual Monetary Conference has brought together leading scholars and policymakers to discuss important issues in the conduct of monetary policy and steps that might be taken to improve the existing system. The conferences have also considered ideas for…
On October 21, I had the pleasure to give the research keynote address at the annual conference of the Financial Services Centers of America (FiSCA) in Miami. Below are my remarks, in which I critique some policymakers' attempts to promote financial inclusion by restricting consumer choice and…
The French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, delivered a scathing rebuke to Libra, the Facebook-led digital currency initiative, in the Financial Times this morning. Coming on the heels of several U.S. companies' withdrawal from the initiative after they received threatening letters from Senators Sherrod Brown and Brian…