On Friday, the Treasury Department released a report on Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) designations. This report could have addressed the problem underlying FSOC's designation authority: the fact that it makes explicit which financial institutions are "too big to fail," paving the way for more bailouts of…
So far, throughout this primer, I've claimed that central banks have one overarching task to perform: their job, I said, is to "regulate the overall availability of liquid assets, and through it the general course of spending, prices, and employment, in the economies they oversee." I've also…
Last week I attended a talk and panel discussion at Brookings, in which Roger Lowenstein discussed his new book on the Fed's origins. I have much to say about that book, and I eventually plan to say some of it here. But for the moment my concern…
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…