quantitative easing

The global economy has been slowing for nearly a year now, both in developed economies and in emerging markets. Things were already weak before this global growth slowdown began. It almost seems like we have been in a permanent state of…

Editor's note: the following is the text of a speech given by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke at the Economic Club of Indiana earlier today. Five Questions about the Federal Reserve and Monetary Policy Good afternoon. I am…

Here is today's daily note. I have three main topics to highlight in the links: Romney, Apple and QE infinity.   Romney The Pawlenty defection is a big deal. I don't think I have ever seen anything like it. It's a total meltdown for…

The Kocherlakota speech is important because he was a hawk earlier in the third easing campaign. See last August's post "Kocherlakota: Statement on Dissenting Permanent Zero Policy." Greg Ip writes in two insightful tweets, "Kocherlakota's…

Stephen Roach makes some good points in the Bloomberg Television interview from September 14th below. He talks mostly about China in a tete-a-tete with Gordon Chang later in the broadcast. Don't miss that. But on the US at the beginning of…

Japan has joined the crowd and started an even more aggressive asset purchase program as the Japanese economy weakens. Meanwhile, serious tax hikes are poised to go into effect very soon. Japan plans to cut state spending because the…

By Marc Chandler The Bank of Japan did not disappoint and joined the ECB and Federal Reserve in taking new and non-traditional measures.The BOJ did practically everything that we outlined yesterdayand justified its move by downgrading its…

I was looking at Tim Duy's latest post on monetary policy and asking myself the same question he asks about normalizing the interest rate cycle. Here's what Tim wrote about getting off the zero bound: "it is perfectly reasonable to…

I am still deciding what this week's weekly post will be on. Clearly, I need to write a bit more substantively about QE3 than I have so far. And I have two media appearances from last week to use to update you on my viewpoint. The broad…

By Sober Look Credit Suisse has made an important point with respect to the Fed's purchases of MBS. As we know, a mortgage borrower is long an option to prepay. That means a mortgage lender is short this same prepayment option. Therefore a…