On September 17th, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Bernie Sanders (D-VT) went on Facebook Live to announce their introduction of the Postal Banking Act, a bill that would have the US Postal Service provide a "public option" in some retail banking services. Postal banking has been proposed…
The unanimous decision of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to shift from inflation targeting to average inflation targeting is another step away from its mandate to achieve long-run price stability. Section 2A of the Federal Reserve Act does not say the Fed's long-run objective should be…
It occurs to me that recent discussions of the Fed's new average inflation targeting plan gloss over a subtle distinction between two different kinds of Average Inflation Targeting (AIT). Hence this post explaining the difference, and why I think it matters. The difference between the two sorts…
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…