deflation

I have been in meetings with Very Serious Texas Politicians where secession was earnestly discussed 15 years ago. Do I think that could happen? No. The Fed will never choose hyperinflation, and I do not think you can find 60 Senators to…

A cross post by Rick Bookstaber which originally appeared on his blog. My last post posited a future world where technology-driven production and consumption lead to a secular drop in demand, and with it a drop in employment, resulting in…

Ever since Fred Sheehan published his post on the bifurcated view on "The 'Flations", I have been using this as a baseline way of talking about prices. Easy monetary policy is geared to raising prices. However, if the secular…

In our September 28 Salvo, we imagined an opportunity to ask Chairman Bernanke the following question: “What does the Fed do if it expands its balance sheet to $4 trillion or $6 trillion, drives the 10-year yield down to 2% or less, but…

Chris sees the foreclosure crisis developing into a drip, drip of foreclosed property, unpaid property taxes, and loan losses. In his view, the Obama Administration is in a similar position to the Hoover Administration during the…

In a synchronized global economic downturn, the temptation for policy makers is to view economic growth as a zero-sum game and to take policies that, while favourable to domestic constituents, end up 'stealing' growth from elsewhere. The…

Irving Fisher was a leading economist in the early 20th century. After being caught out during the Great Depression (he famously quipped, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." right before the…

It's inflation that the Federal Reserve is after. Everyone knows this. The Fed has made it explicit. The sentence from the FOMC that Marshall highlighted yesterday shows you that: "The Committee will continue to monitor the…

The chart below is from today's morning Breakfast with Dave missive by Gluskin Sheff's David Rosenberg. How do you fight against losses this large? Like Richard Koo and David Rosenberg, I believe the monumental hit that balance sheets of…

During this credit crisis, you keep hearing talking heads act as if deflation is the worst thing that could hit an economy. Just a few years ago we kept hearing people talking about inflation as if it were the thing to avoid. Now suddenly,…