Monetary Muddle
Brighter economic fortunes are usually met with expectations of less-easy monetary policy from the Federal Reserve. When recession sets in, the Fed loosens its stance to spur recovery. When recovery ...
The Fed’s Dilemma
During the credit crisis, the Federal Reserve has gone to unprecedented lengths to provide the financial system with abundant supplies of liquidity. There are two purposes behind these actions: to ...
Ready for Life after Deflation?
In the face of mounting concern that the economy could slide into a deflationary spiral, the price of gold has rallied as much as $130 off its recent lows. Meanwhile, ...
The Inflation Threat Is Not Retreating
With the government’s official price indicators having climbed to rates not seen in many years, some are musing that the worst of the inflation uptrend is behind us. A prominent ...
The Media’s Pre-Reagan Agenda
The pall of perceived gloom that continues to hang over the economy may have reached its nadir with the report this week that consumer confidence fell to a 16-year low, ...
Emerging Dollar Inflation
The Federal Reserve maintains that its aggressive easing campaign is not posing a significant risk of an inflationary blowback. In making this case, the Fed argues that while the U.S. ...
Recession Talk Is Cheap
If the U.S. is capable of talking itself into an economic downturn, we may be on the cusp of the first recession in history caused by a bad mood. More ...
Slowdown?
The prophets of economic gloom have been out in force lately, convinced that the financial-market turmoil of recent months spells serious trouble for the broader economy. With their pipeline to ...
Cutting Through the Bond Bull
It is becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. economy is emerging from a brief lull and resuming growth on par with the plus-3 percent annual rates that had been the ...
The Fed’s Task, from the Supply-Side
This Federal Reserve rate-hiking exercise — which over the past two years has seen the overnight fed funds rate target rise from 1 percent to 5.25 percent in quarter-point moves ...