money

The Norwegian central bank has hiked rates 25 basis points, making it the third central bank and first European central bank to do so since the global recovery process started. The Financial Times says: Norway’s central bank increased…

Nouriel Roubini seems to think so. In remarks quoted via Bloomberg, he called the enormous increase in asset prices “the mother of all carry trades.” Investors worldwide are borrowing dollars to buy assets including equities and…

Bill Gross has a must-read piece out for his monthly Investment Outlook called “Midnight Candles.” He begins the piece with allusions to his advancing years (Gross is now 65) and the mortality he feels because of it – pretty sobering stuff.…

Steve Horwitz had an interesting read last week on Friedrich von Hayek, the Nobel Prize winning Austrian School economist. Von Hayek is best known for his 1944 Libertarian call to arms “Road to Serfdom” and is generally considered one of…

Marshall Auerback here with a few thoughts on money, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, and the alphabet soup of emergency liquidity facilities. The expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet has been widely misunderstood within the economics…

I just came across a post on Zero Hedge called “An Overview Of The Fed's Intervention In Equity Markets Via The Primary Dealer Credit Facility.” Now, that’s a mouthful. As far as I can discern, the post’s purpose is to expose alleged…

Morgan Stanley has an interesting piece out this morning called Debtflation. In the past, they have raised alarm bells over what they see as embedded inflation in the loose monetary policy presently being followed by most central…

In January, Ben Bernanke gave a very important speech at the London School of Economics where he laid out the Federal Reserve’s strategy in fighting the forces of deflation and market illiquidity (see post with videos here).  His was a…

You are a teacher at a local primary school. Each school day you and some of your colleagues watch over the children at the school playground to make sure all of the children follow the rules and keep their hands to themselves. Your role is…

Wolfgang Munchau of the Financial Times wrote a very important comment piece in today’s Financial Times. In it he said that central banks are targeting asset prices to avoid the brunt of cyclical downturns. This policy is inducing asset…