Economics

It just isn't going to work, and it's very interesting that the man who invested this type of what I call a voodoo economic policy -George H.W. Bush, Carnegie Mellon University, 10 April 1980, in reference to Ronald Reagan’s…

So, the Fed has basically just announced it will stop QE2. It will then start selling Treasuries. And remember, this is at the same time the Treasury is selling $10 billion a month in mortgage securities. Only after this will rates be…

I ran across a post by Robert Murphy over at the Mises Institute blog on Modern Monetary Theory. Since I have been pushing the idea that the centrality of secular debt accumulation makes some ideas from MMT and Austrian Economics…

QE is, in fact, a ‘crop failure’ for the dollar. The Fed’s shifting of securities out of the economy and replacing them with clearing balances removes interest income. And the lower rates from Fed policy also reduces interest paid to the…

Banks are never constrained by reserves or reserve ratios. Banks are capital constrained. In our fiat money system, the central bank uses reserves in the system to help the Federal hit a target interest rate. So, the central bank provides…

Once politicians set policy and commit to it by signing it into existence, they would rather risk losing office than change course.

Reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. That's why they call it The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning. So, as they put it, "The evidence reviewed here shows not…

The latest figures from the US show that the consumer price index rose 0.5% in March, whilst the core personal consumption expenditure price index rose only 0.1%. This column explains the roles of these competing measures and argues that US…

We debated whether to call Section 3 "Devaluation & Transformation" or 'Transformation and Devaluation" because we could not be sure (or possibly know) which would be generally recognized first. We finally opted for "Devaluation and…

Is there a viable currency to replace the US dollar when over-leverage, economic imbalances and consequent money printing ultimately lead to an overwhelming decline in confidence in the dollar as a store of value?