As the 2020 presidential election season heats up, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is being pushed from all sides. President Trump has castigated him for overly tight monetary policy and has implied that Powell is a “bigger enemy” than Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, William Dudley, who recently headed…
If the recent yield curve panic proves anything, it proves that, in financial markets, what may start out as a mere statistical correlation, and possibly a spurious one, can become a genuine causal relationship. In particular, if enough people subscribe to a post-hoc fallacy, it may not…
Regular Alt-M readers are no doubt looking forward to the FOMC's announcement next Wednesday. But I doubt they'll be sitting at the edges of their seats between now and then, much less biting their fingernails. Markets have, after all, been anticipating a modest Fed cut ever since…
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…
Earlier this month I was lucky enough to attend the Federal Reserve's much-anticipated conference on "Monetary Policy Strategy, Tools, and Communication Practices." This was the "research" component of a series of Fed Listens events kicked off this February and wrapped-up last week. The aim of the series…