bubble

After having been considered to head both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Israel earlier this year, Lawrence Summers has been propelled back into the center of the broader economic dialogue with a speech at a recent IMF Economic Forum.…

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, policy makers’ aversion to fiscal policy is still large. So monetary policy rules the roost. With developed economies burdened by low growth, unemployment, and high levels of debt, monetary agents…

On Thursday, Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Charles Plosser gave a speech on Thursday called “A Limited Central Bank” that I highly recommend. The underlying theme of Plosser’s speech was that central banks should have a limited…

The German-language media have been voicing concerns over the ECB’s low interest-rate policy and its effect on savings and investment in the euro zone. This makes sense given the state of the economy in Germany and Austria is significantly…

Yesterday the European Central Bank cut the interest rate on its main refinancing operations by 25 basis points to a record low 0.25%. It also cut the rate on the marginal lending facility by 25 basis points to 0.75%. The news was…

The latest data out of Europe shows the economy in the euro zone continuing to expand and suggests that we are probably in a technical recovery. In Europe, however, the threat to recovery is to the downside, whereas in the U.S. the main…

Federal Reserve Governor Stein: The traditional, pre-crisis framing of the question went something like this: Should policymakers rely on ex ante measures to lean against potential financial imbalances as they build up, and thereby lower…

The central banks in Sweden and Germany are concerned about overheating economies as the European sovereign debt crisis has led to a net inflow of investment into their housing sectors. If one looks at European economic policy, these…

The first seven trading days of September have offered all of these markets some much needed breathing space with EM currencies, bond and equity markets all doing considerably better. It is thus tempting to conclude that this was just…

This is crazy. John Carney tells us that not only are homes now growing increasingly less affordable, but the psychology of the US housing market is changing to one of the fear of being priced out. Frankly, I can't believe we are here…