In his first speech as a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, Christopher Waller defended Fed independence and reassured his audience that “deficit financing and debt servicing issues play no role in our policy decisions and never will.” His goal was to dispel the “narrative”…
This is the third and final essay in my series on proposals to help reduce the number of unbanked households in America. In my prior essays, I examined the history of the postal savings system between 1910 and 1966, and I evaluated present-day calls to allow the…
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…
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…