Archive | Money and Banking

The selloff in gold that captured the world’s attention in mid-April has revealed some truths about how the market trades and the sentiments of many of the investors who have piled into the trade over the past few years. While the correction does highlight a higher degree of uncertainty than many of the most ardent [...]

After going back and forth, the government of Cyprus ultimately decided, under international pressure, to go ahead with its plan to raid people’s bank accounts. But could similar policies be imposed in other countries, including the United States?

The past few months illustrate a serious spread of Bernanke’s policies across the entire developed world.

The Fed has no credible exit strategy.

There is no exit strategy because the results of the Fed withdrawing its artificial support would be disastrous for the US Treasury and in the short-term, the US economy.

The birth, and the apparent death, of the trillion dollar platinum coin idea may one day be recalled as a mere footnote in the current debt crisis drama. The ultimate rejection of the idea (which was to use a loophole in commemorative coinage law to mint a platinum coin of any denomination) by both the [...]

Economists who hold the popular view that expanding the money supply will provide the best medicine for our ailing economy dismiss the inflationary concerns of monetary hawks, like me, by pointing to the supposedly low inflation that has occurred during the current period of rampant Fed activism. In a recent blog post aimed specifically at [...]

By upping the ante once again in its gamble to revive the lethargic economy through monetary action, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee is now compelling the rest of us to buy into a game that we may not be able to afford.  At his press conference this week, Fed Chairman Bernanke explained how the [...]

Although the movement to “End the Fed” has a considerable popular following, only a very tiny number of economists—our illustrious contributors amongst them—take the possibility seriously. For the rest, the Federal Reserve System is, not an ideal currency system to be sure (for who would dare to call it that?), but, implicitly at least, the [...]