money

Just over a decade ago, the Bank of England was given full monetary independence from the British government, making it one of the last major central banks to achieve this status. The move was heralded as critical for maintaining…

What are the Swiss doing selling dollars? I don't have an answer to this question. But, I thought I would posit it because a reader tipped me off to a development via the Blog Alea:

The new $100,000,000,000,000 note is now out in Zimbabwe. It is worth 23 Euros ($30)

News in Japan has been particularly grim. Industrial production has plummeted, exports are in free fall and banks are simply not lending as excess reserves pile up. As a result, Japanese share prices threaten to revisit lows that bring the…

The European Central Bank cut its benchmark rate 50 basis points (0.50%) to 2% because of weakness in the Eurozone. While a cut was widely anticipated, it was not known whether the ECB would cut 25 or 50 basis points. However, the cut of…

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech at the London School of Economics today in which he outlined the measures the Federal Reserve was prepared to take in order to deal with the financial crisis. Of particular note, Bernanke…

UPDATE: 25 Mar 2009: In anticipation of the upcoming G-20 meeting and on the heels of some provocative comments made by Chinese officials regarding the US dollar, I would like to re-post this article from January. Paul Davidson has a very…

Raghuram Rajan is a bloody good economist, that's who he is. Rajan, who succeeded Kenneth Rogoff at the International Monetary Fund as Chief Economist, is also a prescient voice of reason on any number of different subjects. Recently,…

This is the time of year when everyone tends to look back and sum up the year in one way or another. I have been doing much of the same. In keeping with that theme, I have taken a good look through my nearly 1400 posts to get a better…

Despite the gloom and doom that you might read right here, things are certainly much better in credit markets than at the height of the credit crisis. Of course we still have a long way to go, but this chart from Bloomberg of the TED…