monetary policy

Sheila Bair is a straight shooter. And as such, she laid it on the line today in her prepared remarks before Congress.  Her remarks were on the money on several counts. I will highlight just a few with commentary followed by the…

I had originally looked to add this video to the last post on Black about the federal reserve. But the video here showing Black speaking to Bloomberg News about the recent AIG scandal and financial regulation deserves a post of its own.…

China has been very successful in maintaining GDP growth in the midst of one of the worst global downturns on record.  In 2009, the concern was how an export collapse would trigger slow growth and unemployment. But as 2010 begins, for…

This post by Bill Black originally appeared at New Deal 2.0. William K. Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He is a white-collar criminologist and was a senior financial regulator.…

Calculated Risk has a post out today called Bubbles and Employment. The gist of the post is that interest rates play a role in creating bubbles as demonstrated by data on employment and common property yard-sticks like price-to-rent and…

This is the latest in a series of forecast posts. Notably, there has been Richard Bernstein, Saxo Bank and Byron Wien. The Pragmatic Capitalist has The Ultimate Guide to 2010 Investment Predictions and Outlooks, if you are interested in…

Unadjusted jobless claims after the holiday season are always monstrous because of seasonality. Last week 645,571 people filed initial claims for unemployment insurance in the United States.  That is down from the 731,958 who filed at…

This quote from Caroline Baum sums things up pretty well about the Fed's complicity in blowing a massive bubble in housing and in stocks before it. I know Bernanke has given this issue a great deal of thought and devoted the Fed’s…

As a writer, Matt Taibbi is a lot more vitriolic than I am. He curses, makes some pretty over-the-top personal attacks, and divines a policymaker’s intent where I don’t think he can. But, this goes mostly to style.  Substantively…

Given the fact that I have just finished writing two articles on Wien’s predictions for 2010, I thought it relevant to look back at the last three years of Wien’s surprises to just before the housing crisis.  I posted the 2009 predictions…