monetary policy

By Michael Pettis On August 8 Credit Suisse published a study they had commissioned by Professor Wang Xiaolu of the China Reform Foundation.  A lot of readers have asked on- and offline me to discuss this study in light of the entry I…

By Doug Hornig of Casey Research This coming Friday and Saturday, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City will sponsor its annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It’s a chance for Fed officials, foreign counterparts, and academic…

By Comstock Partners. Five years ago on the eve of another of the Fed's annual financial symposiums at Jackson Hole, we wrote the following: "Since 1999 when the financial bubble was in full bloom (due in large part to the Fed) we…

Frederick Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession (McGraw-Hill, 2009). Inflation versus deflation discussions are the rule for columnists,…

How does the government pay for stuff? That's a question we should all be asking ourselves. I'm speaking here both from a philosophical and functional perspective. You and I have to earn our money by working. Usually we deposit this money…

From Gerard Minack of Morgan Stanley (hat tip Scott): The past two years have demonstrated the high cost of these policy errors. More to the point, the private sector now seems leery of debt and aiming to increase saving. This matters a…

By Comstock Partners It becomes clearer every day that the economy is headed for a renewed recession or a recovery so slow it will seem like one. Initial unemployment claims climbed to 500,000 last week for the first time since November…

Well, before we go any further, I would like to make clear that what I am going to talk about in this post is not anything illegal, or even irregular (things like this must be going on in almost all Euro Area countries even as I write).…

Frederick Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession (McGraw-Hill, 2009). The incessant debate of whether the economy is inflating or deflating…

By Comstock Partners The Fed tried to thread a needle and ended up satisfying nobody. They confirmed to all the doubters that the economy was indeed weak and that they really couldn't do much about it without resorting to completely…