Federal Reserve

Archive for Federal Reserve

Over on his blog, Scott Sumner has been saying “I hope the inflation hawks are happy, this is what tight money looks like” after the big sell-off in the markets when “Operation Twist” turned out to be sterilized. That’s a bit like pointing out the heroin addict going through terrible withdrawal pains and saying to […]

Caitlin Long Surprises Talking Heads By Suggesting Low Interest Rates Could Be Bad

Caitlin Long works at Morgan Stanley and was at the Mises event in Vienna. She doesn’t really get a chance to say much in this clip. I mostly find it funny that the smartest guys in the room (well I don’t know if the camera person is a man) have never heard the idea that […]

Mises Rolling Over in His Grave

The glib blurb from The Economist’s blog: About Free exchange In this blog, our correspondents consider the fluctuations in the world economy and the policies intended to produce more booms than busts. Adam Smith argued that in a free exchange both parties benefit, and this blog’s aim is to encourage a free exchange of views […]

Operation Distract

Whoa! Everybody is getting all bent up about the bond duration aspect of Operation Twist, but I just noticed this in the Fed’s official statement: To help support conditions in mortgage markets, the Committee will now reinvest principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities. This is […]

Arnold Kling Being Too Kind to Scott Sumner?

Arnold Kling has mood swings on his posts over at EconLog. When he wants to blow somebody up, it’s best to duck and take cover because he can really let the guy have it, especially if it involves housing and mortgage finance (since Kling really knows what he’s talking about). On the other hand, Kling […]

Scott Sumner, the Unbeatable Foe

When last we left, in March our anti-hero Scott Sumner was hanging up the keyboard, having taken credit for getting Bernanke to inflate more, and thereby creating several trillion dollars in worldwide wealth. But now Scott’s back, and his printing press is more powerful than ever. In the comments of a recent post, I was […]