monetary policy

Long-term interest rates are really a series of short-term rates smashed together. The real reason that the Federal Reserve would lose control over short-term interest rates is because the economy was operating at full capacity and creating…

When bankruptcy comes, it does so normally as a result of a liquidity crisis. This is true for countries as much as it is for companies. It's not as if someone in charge walks in one day and says "you are insolvent so you must default…

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 Federal Reserve releases transcripts of the Federal Open Market…

As we are about move into the fourth day of the week where EU policy makers together with the IMF and the ECB launched an unprecedented series of aid tools to combat the mounting risk of a collapse in Greece and elsewhere in the European…

RBS' Chief Market Strategist Bob Janjuah is one of the more bearish prognosticators in global finance.  He takes a fairly anti-fiat currency position and couches what he sees with the present financial crisis as the era of the destruction…

Imagine a situation in which 49 other states are forced to unite together to help forestall the imminent insolvency of California, and you'll get a good idea of the limitations inherent in the EU "rescue proposal" for Greece and…

I was reading an interview in Handelsblatt with the EU's Olli Rehn and I found this exchange telling: Handelsblatt: Mr. Commissioner, with yesterday's decision is an EU-debt agency created which issues Euro Bonds? Olli Rehn: I will…

Here's a thought regarding the European liquidity scheme. My understanding is that the ECB is legally prohibited from 'monetizing' Eurozone debt by buying it directly at auction. Therefore, in instituting the nuclear option of buying up…

I am rushing so I will only point to the relevant pieces from Bloomberg. Perhaps the most significant thing for me will that the ECB will now be buyers of real assets (albeit that these bids will be sterilised). No. 1 from Bloomberg ...…

It thus appears that those hoping that that the market turmoil would be confined to Europe were proven wrong today as global stocks entered a veritable rout most likely triggered by the lack of any sort of meaningful action by part of the…