2011

The key takeaway from the S&P announcement is that the US has been put on notice, but no ratings action are likely until 2013. With no one expecting any serious progress on deficit reduction until after the 2012 election, S&P seems…

Michael Tanner is a Cato Institute Senior Fellow and L. Randall Wray is Professor of Economics, University of Missouri, Kansas City. The two discussed opposing views on how to deal with the U.S. federal deficit in a radio interview…

Here's the question: Can sovereignty and effective international supervision be reconciled when it comes to complex large financial institutions? Simon Johnson lays out a compelling case that they cannot. As he has said time and again,…

Over the last three decades the US financial sector has grown six times faster than nominal GDP. This column argues that there comes a point when the financial sector has a negative effect on growth – that is, when credit to the private…

It is one of the paradoxes of life that the most practical means to ensure that the system does not collapse is to insist on justice for all and to ignore demands for special treatment premised on claims that justice places the system at…

. If China’s current account surplus declines, there are, very broadly, two ways this can affect the US. On the one hand the surplus can simply be transferred to another country. For example if China’s current account surplus declines…

Some easy questions and some harder ones about why gold is rising in price - Go ahead take the quiz.

Here is Omid Malekan back with a video explaining inflation to the layman. You have seen his videos on Bank Bailouts Explained and Quantitative Easing Explained. The QE explained video was especially popular and went viral on the Internet.…

Here's a great graph of US income tax rates back to when personal income taxes were started. You can see the marginal rate for personal income has come way down from its 1945 peak. A few months ago, Michael Hudson answered the question,…

The easy stance of developed economy central banks is driving money into emerging markets and fostering the accommodative stance of those central banks, fearful of more hot money flows or currency appreciation. Easy money in the face of…