credit

This is a pretty wonkish post but I hope you appreciate the concepts presented. I made some allusions to modern monetary theory in a recent post when I asked, “If the U.S. stopped issuing treasuries, would it go broke?” The short answer is…

In this post: A few thoughts about the limitations of government Our founding fathers How large should government be? How policy helps frame the debate Where we are headed In a recent post, “Stop the madness now!” I voiced…

This is a post I just wrote over at Yves Smith’s site Naked Capitalism in response to a reader request. Marshall Auerback has already written a reply as well and I will post this later today. A reader at Naked Capitalism asked us to…

Hat tip Rolfe Winkler.

After a huge fall off in credit consistent with the fall in nominal GDP, we are seeing credit stabilise at a lower level. Debt to GDP ratios may not be lower, but as GDP is lower, so too is credit in the system.  Yet there is a large…

Is this propaganda? I just received this e-mail from the FDIC’s consumer news with the title above. Personally, I never doubted that unbrokered deposits under $250,000 are safe at U.S. depositary institutions. But, the natural sceptic in me…

The motivating factor?  this article in Politico: President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year's State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay…

Andy Xie thinks the Fed is on an inflationary path.  Last month, he wrote an article in Caijing which says that ‘stagflation lite’ is the Federal Reserve’s preferred outcome. What’s interesting is his recent article about the need for…

Columbia University Professor and former Federal Reserve official Frederic Mishkin wrote a much-discussed Op-Ed in the Financial Times yesterday. In it, he asks Are potential asset-price bubbles always dangerous? He answers this…

I have just taken a look at the consumer credit figures for September, released just yesterday by the Federal Reserve. The data do show some modest deleveraging, especially when looking at the recent increase in nominal GDP. However, it is…