Political Economy

The Fed may not be able to manufacture new net financial assets, but it can and will create lots of excess cash reserves! (Hat tip Scott F.)

“It’s no use throwing dollars out of a helicopter,” Guido Mantega, the finance minister, said on Thursday. “The only result is to devalue the dollar to achieve greater competitiveness on international markets.” At a joint press…

by L. Randall Wray In recent weeks, the explanation for the financial and economic crisis that has gripped the world economy has shifted sharply from deregulation and lack of governmental oversight of financial institutions to fraud and…

In a famous "Saturday Night Live" skit, Christopher Walken plays a legendary rock music impresario whose advice, his only advice, to a young band is "more cowbell." The actor Will Ferrell furiously pounds away on a…

by Michael Pettis In the debate about global trade imbalances, we often hear it said that because Americans produce nothing that China exports to the US, any move to restrict Chinese imports to the US would have no employment effect on…

Andy Lees of UBS writes that quantitative easing is having the (designed) effect of diluting and transferring US debt elsewhere. It is already a success. In a morning note he tells us: Yesterday Saudi shifted its oil price target…

by Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of…

If you’re reading this Salvo on the day it is posted, then you are likely holding your breath on a number of fronts: the outcome of the election tonight, the FOMC announcement tomorrow afternoon and the policy meetings of the Bank of…

by Phillippe Legrain While the debate over global imbalances often focuses on China, this column argues that the biggest threat to the world economy comes from the other side of the seesaw – the US. Countless column inches are devoted…

The latest video from Bloomberg with Jim Bianco is below. Bianco believes the markets will be disappointed Fed if the Fed shows less than 5 months of $100 billion in QE tomorrow. He also doubts whether a tax hike would be a "big, big"…