Introduction Understanding what caused the Great Depression of 1929-39 and why it persisted so long has been fairly characterized by Ben Bernanke as the "Holy Grail of Macroeconomics." The fear that the financial crisis of 2008 would lead to a similar Depression induced the Fed to use…
Ten years after the 2008 financial crisis we are again facing the possibility of economic turmoil as the Fed and other central banks exit their unconventional monetary policies by raising interest rates and shrinking their balance sheets. Although central banks will move gradually, unforeseen circumstances could trigger…
Recently David Beckworth and Martin Sandbu, among others, have drawn attention to an interesting paper by James Bullard and Riccardo DiCecio unveiled in Norway earlier this year. In it, Bullard and DiCecio investigate a model economy possessing both a large private credit market and "Non-state contingent nominal…
In the long, tragic chronicle of the Great Recession, April 30, 2008, doesn't resonate as an infamous date. It lacks the notoriety of March 16, 2008, when, by guaranteeing $30 billion of Bear Stearns' assets, the Federal Reserve crossed a last-resort lending Rubicon, extending its safety net…
In the first, 1922 edition of Money, his own now-classic primer on monetary economics, the great Dennis Robertson included a chapter he called "Money in the Great Muddle," about the blow World War I dealt to England's once (relatively) rock-solid monetary system, and to other monetary arrangements…