All Entries Tagged With: "Federal Reserve System"
The Real Problem: Global Finance and Global “Free-Trade”
Despite huge efforts and spending by government, we still have a “jobless recovery”. Before more money is printed and deficits further increased, we need to realize where the jobs have gone.
Fed’s Bernanke Running Out of Options
When Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks on Friday at the Fed’s annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Fed-watchers from around the world will be hanging on his every word, phrase, and nuance for clues. They’ll be listening to hear that the chairman knows what’s happening in the economy, and that if things get worse, he has a plan.
Fed Confirms Recovery Stalled
When the Federal Open Market Committee announced yesterday that “the pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated,” stocks in Europe lost three percent of their value, interest rates on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note dropped startlingly as investors ran to safety, and the dollar hit the lowest level against the Japanese Yen since 1995.
The Fed is Caught in its Own Trap
The much-anticipated, long-awaited pronouncement from the Fed yesterday confirmed what nearly everyone else expected: Things are not going swimmingly, but they’re ready to help further if the patient continues to drown.
Great Depression II: Here We Go Again?
The unremitting flow of negative news about the economy has finally caught the attention of the mainstream media, causing an increasing number of economists to make comparisons between today’s recession and the Great Depression
Fixing State Budgets Will Be Painful
Pew Research recently polled Americans about ways to bring state budgets into balance and found that respondents did not like any of the options. In its Congressional Connection poll released June 28, Pew Research asked if a federal bailout of financially troubled states should be considered. Barely one in four said yes. Nearly 60 percent said no, that the states should take care of their problems on their own.
Financial Reform: Expanding Hubris, Limiting Freedom
When the House passed the 2,319-page Dodd-Frank financial reform bill by a vote of 237–192, all it did was confirm for many the extraordinary hubris of legislators believing they could in fact “fix” the problems they themselves created which resulted in the Great Recession of 2008.
New York’s Plan: Kick the Can
New York Governor David Paterson said in a radio interview on June 10 that his state might have to issue IOUs to pay its bills, or else face “anarchy in the streets.” The state faces a $9.2 billion deficit, and the legislature is two months late in voting on the budget.
Greenspan’s Implausible Denial
In plain English, Greenspan denies culpability for the housing bubble and claims that he never saw it coming—and neither will anyone else when it happens again.
Free Markets, Deregulation, and Blame
Free markets, in the full sense of the phrase, exist only in the minds and imaginations of free-market economists from the Austrian School, such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard.
