Today the Federal Reserve is set to announce the schedule for unwinding its balance sheet. This is a step in the right direction, but it also has the potential to increase the risk of a recession. It’s past time to reduce the Fed’s balance sheet because its role…
The Fed’s persistent failure to reach its 2 percent inflation target ever since that target was first made explicit in 2012 has elicited a great deal of commentary in the last couple months, from economists, journalists, and some Fed officials themselves. And well it ought to, for…
Prior to 2008, the Fed could accelerate or decelerate inflation by expanding or contracting the monetary base and therefore bank reserves with open market operations and/or with repo loans to dealers. Since 2008, however, the Fed has paid interest on excess reserves equal to or even higher…
If you haven't seen much of me on these pages lately, that's because I've spent most of the last few weeks feeding and grooming my favorite hobby horse: that's right, the Fed's policy of encouraging banks to hoard reserves by paying above-market rates on their Fed reserve…
In our recent American Banker opinion piece, Heritage's Norbert Michel and I argue that, if the Fed is really serious about shrinking its balance sheet, it had better quit paying interest on banks' excess reserves (IOER) as well. How come? Because the current, relatively high IOER rate …