Even a Central Banker Admits: No Proof Fed’s Massive Intervention Succeeded
Stephen Williamson, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, joined critics of the US central bank last week by conceding there is no proof that massive intervention in the credit markets such as the Fed’s quantitative easing program has worked. “There appears to be no evidence that QE works either to increase inflation, if we look at...
Hack of SEC’s System Shows the Drawbacks to Financial Market Investments
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced this week that the electronic system it uses for storing filings from public companies was accessed by hackers. The...
Federal Reserve Quantitative Tightening Could Spur the Next Financial Crisis
In an unsurprising development, the Federal Reserve decided at this week’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting that it would begin implementing the program of drawing down its balance sheet that it had begun to develop earlier this year. But while ending aggressively expansive monetary policy is a good thing, actively tightening monetary policy does bring up some cause...
China to Issue $2 Billion in Dollar-Denominated Debt
The Chinese government just recently announced plans to issue $2 billion in dollar-denominated debt, its first dollar-denominated debt issuance since 2004. With countries such as Iran, Russia, and Venezuela turning to the yuan both for political reasons as well as for oil sales, and with the yuan’s recent inclusion in the IMF’s basket of currencies that make up Special...
Mexican Congressmen Propose Monetization of Silver Libertad Coin
A group of Congressmen in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies recently held a forum to propose the monetization of the Mexican Silver Libertad one ounce silver coin. The monetization of silver in Mexico has been a favorite project of Mexican businessman Hugo Salinas Price for years, and the idea continues to enjoy support among some members of Mexico’s political class. Supporters...
Worried About the Equifax Breach? Here Are Some Tips
After the massive Equifax data breach, you might want to take proactive measures to check your credit history and prevent your identity from being stolen. Equifax’s measures to protect consumers in the aftermath of the breach have rightly been criticized, from setting up a site that asked for even more sensitive personal information, to sending consumers to an erroneous...
Uncertainty Over President Trump’s Tax Reform Plans
President Trump claimed today that rich Americans will “not be gaining at all” from his proposed tax reform plan. That runs counter to many analyses of the tax reform plans he campaigned on as a candidate, which found that the rich would in fact benefit. The devil, of course, is in the details, but this statement leads to speculation...
The United States’ Ever-Growing Debt Bubble
The national debt when Bill Clinton took office in 1993 was $4.188 trillion. By the time he left office in 2001, it was $5.727 trillion, an increase of 37 percent. As profligate as that seemed at the time, it has been overshadowed by even greater subsequent debt increases. By the time President George W. Bush left office in 2009,...