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…
Proposed nominees Stephen Moore and Herman Cain having dropped out of contention, discussion continues over the Trump administration’s possible next nomination to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. The views of the latest candidate under consideration by the administration, Judy Shelton, have revived a question that commentators…
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…
Whenever a government agency gains a new power, there’s a risk that, whatever the power’s original intent, it will end up being put to other uses, perhaps good, but often bad. Such is the case for the Fed’s power to pay banks interest on their Federal Reserve…
ONCE UPON A TIME, when my twin brother and I were tots, our father convinced us that he could make a traffic light change from red to green whenever he wanted it to. Raising his hand to the light as we sat at an intersection, he would…