Political Economy

Former Atlanta Fed President William Ford says, technically, yes, the Fed can go bankrupt. He argues that the Fed's balance sheet is highly leveraged as a result of quantitative easing expanding its balance sheet. The result is that the…

Frederick J. Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession  (McGraw-Hill, 2009) and "The Coming Collapse of the Municipal Bond…

By Marc Chandler and the BBH Currency Strategy Team Europe’s debt crisis remains among the most important factors in the global capital markets. By some market-based measures, like interest rate spreads and credit default swap prices, the…

There are no absolutely safe sovereigns — ‘rates analysis’ has to be done simultaneously with ‘credit analysis’ for all sovereigns, including the G3. There are likely to be several sovereign debt restructurings in the euro area…

I have been reading the press accounts on the William Daley appointment as President Obama's Chief of Staff. Bo Cutter is impressed and says "the new Obama Team will get things done" because "Bill Daley can build…

We know that the Chinese have turned to price controls to stop the rise in food price inflation. Everywhere in the emerging markets, where incomes are lower than in the developed world, the rise in commodity prices is putting huge strains…

Word is out all around Washington that the Obama Administration plans to cut US defense programs by $78 billion and 70,000 troops by 2015. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush Administration with credibility within the…

I was on the CBC's hour-long primetime finance show Lang & O'Leary last week talking about the European financial crisis. Prior to my appearance I wrote "The European Sovereign Debt Crisis" to give a full accounting of the…

The Quantitative Easing Explained video remixed...oh my.

By Doug Hornig Today, the Federal Communications Commission acts on so-called “Net Neutrality,” and given the commissioners’ predicted 3-2 party line vote, it would be a shocker if they rejected it. What happens next is anyone’s guess,…