(As the Fed is once again planning to unwind its balance sheet, the size of which doubled as a result of its COVID-19-crisis Quantitative Easing, we think it worthwhile to draw your attention to a 2017 exchange, on the fiscal implications of such an unwind, between two…
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…
On November 16th, over 200 people gathered in the Hayek Auditorium here at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, to explore the future of monetary policy at our 35th Annual Monetary Conference. The all-day affair featured four panels of distinguished speakers — including Stanford economist John B….
The Cat's Out of the Bag In September, when current Fed chair Janet Yellen held a press conference announcing details of the Fed's normalization plan, yours truly insisted that that plan reflected the Fed's "determination to maintain its current, bureaucratically advantageous operating system," in which monetary policy…
The "big news" from Janet Yellen's recent press conference, which was hardly news at all to those who have followed the Fed's past announcements, was that Fed officials, having long promised to eventually undo much if not all of the vast balance sheet growth brought about by…