In a post published here in mid-November, I traced the Fed's repo-market troubles to post-2008 changes in the importance and volatility of two of the Fed's non-reserve liabilities: TGA balances and the foreign repo pool. Then, in a companion piece, I made some suggestions for reining-in those…
Twice recently I've come across arguments to the effect that, despite what some libertarians, goldbugs, cryptocurrency fans, and Fed Board candidates imagine, the idea that the historical gold standard kept governments from managing money, leaving the job to market forces, is a myth. In his June 24th…
As all dedicated Alt-M readers know, I am a big fan of the Canadian banking and monetary system that flourished between Canada's Confederation in 1867 and the outbreak of the First World War. Besides thinking it was a darn good system, I also regard it as the…
(Editor's note: This is the second installment of a three-part article.) Intervention or Private Initiative? As I argued in my previous post addressing Fung et al.'s article on Canada's private banknote currency, the imperfections of that currency appear, on close inspection, far less substantial than Fung et…