Tag Archives: Ben Bernanke

It is largely irrelevant, but still the political theater is fascinating. As is now standard operating procedure, whatever comes out of the Trump administration immediately is conferred as the standard for awful. This is not my own determination, mind you, but that of the mainstream, whatever that is these days. And so it is with the first set of budget figures that include very robust growth projections, a point of...

Having discontinued its production of EUR500 banknotes, it appears Europe is charging towards the utopian dream of a cashless society. Just days after Davos’ elites discussed why the world needs to “get rid of currency,” the European Commission has introduced a proposal enforcing “restrictions on payments in cash.” With Rogoff, Stiglitz, Summers et al. all calling for the end of cash – because only terrorists and...

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com, It’s happening faster than we could have ever imagined. Every time we turn around, it seems, there’s another major assault in the War on Cash. India is the most notable recent example– the embarrassing debacle a few weeks ago in which the government, overnight, “demonetized” its two largest denominations of cash, leaving an entire nation in chaos. But there have been...

Summary: The dot plots are not FOMC commitments or an aggregate view of the FOMC. They are a collection of individual economic forecasts based on the most likely scenario and their view of appropriate policy. The SEP is useful for understanding how Fed officials view the long-term economic parameters, which appears to explain the downward shift in the long-term equilibrium rate for Fed funds. Former Fed chief...

Summary: The dot plots are not FOMC commitments or an aggregate view of the FOMC. They are a collection of individual economic forecasts based on the most likely scenario and their view of appropriate policy. The SEP is useful for understanding how Fed officials view the long-term economic parameters, which appears to explain the downward shift in the long-term equilibrium rate for Fed funds. Former Fed chief...

Can Saving Possibly “Undermine Economic Growth”? In his speech at the New York Federal Reserve of New York on October 5, 2016, the Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer has suggested  that a visible decline in the natural interest rate in the US could be on account of the world glut of saving. According to Fischer, both increased saving and reduced investments have potentially significantly lowered the...

  The Crazies Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who was once laudably referred to as “Maestro” for his supposed astute stewardship of U.S. monetary policy, commented last week on the nation’s current political and economic climate: “We’re not in a stable equilibrium.  I hope we can all find a way out because this too great a country to be undermined, by how should I say it, crazies.”* Help! The crazies...

Summary: Bernanke reviews the changes in the long-term dot plots. There as been a clear trend toward lower long-term growth, unemployment and Fed funds equilibrium. The full adjustment may not be over. Former Fed Chair Bernanke keeps a blog at Brookings.   His latest post offers insight into how to think about Federal Reserve, and in particular, Fed officials’ understanding of the US economy. Bernanke’s...

Chopper Pilot Descends on Nippon Readers are probably aware of recent events in Japan, the global laboratory for interventionist experiments. The theories of assorted fiscal and monetary cranks have been implemented in spades for more than a quarter of a century in the country, to appropriately catastrophic effect. Amid stubbornly stagnating economic output, Japan has amassed a debt pile so vast since the bursting of...

Over the past four days, risk assets have been on a tear, led by the collapsing Yen and soaring Nikkei, as the market has digested daily news that – as we predicted last week – Bernanke has been urging Japan to become the first developed country to unleash the monetary helicopter, in which the central banks directly funds government fiscal spending, most recently with an overnight report that Bernanke has pushed...