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Thomas Hoenig (“Too Big Has Failed”) tapped for FDIC
Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig was my favorite recent member of the Federal Open Market Committee, mainly for his outspoken and eloquent criticism of the “too big to fail”...
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Unlawful interest?
In October 2008, as the financial crisis reached a fever pitch, the Fed started paying interest on banks’ reserves. The rate is very low, 0.25%, but it turns out that at this point in the Lesser...
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Unhappy Halloween
Case-Shiller Housing Price Index, 2003-present As my daughter used to say while handing out Halloweeen candy: “You get what you get.”
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The world economy’s “Mingya!” moment?
“Italy Is Now the Biggest Story in the World,” says Kevin Drum. And he’s not talking about Joe Paterno (whose story I confess to having spent a lot more time following lately than Italy’s). But this is...
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Dean Baker on banks, bailouts, and reform
Naked Capitalism has an excellent two-part interview with Dean Baker, one of the Cassandras who spotted the housing bubble years before it burst and who has been a much-needed gadfly in the ointment of...
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We’re caught in a trap
This just in: The Federal Reserve does not control the universe. Stated differently: The economy is in a liquidity trap (macroeconomists). Or, monetary policy has shot its wad (Pres. Obama to economic...
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How do you do it?
Count me among the skeptics who believe the Fed has pretty much already done all it can to pull the economy out of the deep hole that it’s in. Zero short-term interest rates, purchases of longer-term...
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The Occupy movement, seriously
I’d been meaning to write about the Occupy Wall Street movement, but now I’m intimidated, having just read Mohammed el-Erian’s eloquent take on the movement. Although el-Erian, as CEO of the PIMCO...
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Epic fail
The so-called “supercommittee” of six Democrats and six Republicans, charged last summer with drafting a deal for $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over ten years, failed to do so by today’s deadline. The...
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The strategic deficit
The Republican “starve the beast” strategy of running up huge deficits (preferably by cutting taxes on the wealthy and raining money on military contractors) and then using them as an excuse to cut...
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Tired of defending it
Chris Rock has a great bit where he says he still loves rap music but is tired of defending it, the misogynistic lyrics in particular. I’ve been a longtime advocate of the Federal Reserve and continue...
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Idle times
Today’s new Bureau of Labor Statistics report reveals the instant cure for unemployment: Stop looking for work. I say that not as advice or to be callous, just to explain how it is that November’s...
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Euromad
The euro has always struck me as Germany’s final success at dominating Europe. What two world wars couldn’t accomplish, the Bundesbank could. By the 1990s, Germany looked like such a model of economic...
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Good news and bad news
The good: Initial jobless claims last week were at their lowest level in three and a half years, back to May 2008, before the financial panic hit and before the recession had been declared. The...
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Bad tidings
200 posts later, I’m still agreeing with Nouriel “Dr. Doom” Roubini, whose prognosis for the U.S. economy in 2012 is not good. The best I can say, and this is better than it sounds, is that recovery...
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Oil!
Rising gas prices are on everyone’s mind again, as the price of oil has risen some 25% (about $25 per barrel) in the past year and the price of gasoline inches ever closer to $4 per gallon. While...
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Keynesian jobs programs, R.I.P.
So much for our supposed big-government Keynesian president: government jobs, the emblem of New Deal anti-depression policy, have actually gotten more and more scarce since President Obama took office....
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Glimmer of light
No, I haven’t suddenly turned into an economic optimist, but this week’s new retail sales report is even better news than the media have noted. What’s they’ve noted is that retail sales in July rose...
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Cliff note
Recently I was asked to write a blurb about the omnipresent “fiscal cliff,” and here it is: “Fiscal cliff” is a good metaphor. Like a real cliff, it’s something you shouldn’t jump off and really...
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Glad tidings?
The US unemployment rate fell to a four-year low of 7.7% in November, it was reported yesterday. The BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) report also noted that the economy added 146,000* jobs in November,...
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