Showing posts with label Federal Reserve. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Federal Reserve. Show all posts
Sunday, July 24, 2022
Sunday Reading
How one institution keeps claiming math’s highest awardReiki: still stupid after all these yearsInflation, Unemployment, Mortgage Rates: Here's What History Tells Us About the EconomyHow the Fed Bailed Out the Investor Class Without Spending a Cent
Saturday, May 1, 2021
Weekend Reading
Tucker Carlson Endorses White Supremacist Theory by NameThe Corporate Tax Burden: Facts and FictionAnderson Cooper: Pretty much everything Sen. Johnson said is dangerousHow the Federal Reserve Is Increasing Wealth InequalityWest Allis is the Hottest City in WisconsinSotomayor gives blistering dissent to Trump SCOTUS appointees who find juvenile not worthy of paroleWhy the "Reagan Revolution" Scheme to Gut America's Middle Class is Coming to an EndThe 'Capitalism is Broken' Economy
Monday, September 7, 2020
Holiday Reading
The Fed has a new approach to inflation: What it means for your savings, credit-card debt — and your mortgage rate
U.S. Debt Is Set to Exceed Size of the Economy Next Year, a First Since World War II
Black-Scholes Option Pricing is Wrong
10 Crucial Things That Result From Einstein’s Theories of Relativity
U.S. Debt Is Set to Exceed Size of the Economy Next Year, a First Since World War II
Black-Scholes Option Pricing is Wrong
10 Crucial Things That Result From Einstein’s Theories of Relativity
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Weekend Reading
Do Corporate Tax Incentives Work? 20 States, And Most Cities, Don't Know
Trump Nominates Famous Idiot Stephen Moore To Federal Reserve Board
Neil Gorsuch's Bad-Faith Ploy To Save Partisan Gerrymandering And Doom American Democracy
Fossil Fuel Industry Gave $2,371,680 To Senate Democrats Who Blocked Green New Deal
Putting Number In Context: A Winnable Battle Our Side Doesn't Want To Fight
The 4 Arguments In Defense Of The Electoral College Are Wrong
Why You Shouldn't Listen To Self-Serving Optimists Like Hans Rosling And Steven Pinker
Trump Nominates Famous Idiot Stephen Moore To Federal Reserve Board
Neil Gorsuch's Bad-Faith Ploy To Save Partisan Gerrymandering And Doom American Democracy
Fossil Fuel Industry Gave $2,371,680 To Senate Democrats Who Blocked Green New Deal
Putting Number In Context: A Winnable Battle Our Side Doesn't Want To Fight
The 4 Arguments In Defense Of The Electoral College Are Wrong
Why You Shouldn't Listen To Self-Serving Optimists Like Hans Rosling And Steven Pinker
Saturday, January 12, 2019
Weekend Reading
Fed's Evans Questions March Toward Higher Interest Rates
America's Middle Class Is Vanishing. Nearly Half Of Workers Earn Less Than $30,000
A Historian Makes The Case Against Billionaires
Scientists Have Established A Link Between Brain Damage And Religious Fundamentalism
How Past Income Tax Rate Cuts On The Wealthy Affected The Economy
The Economics Of Soaking The Rich
How Marginal Tax Rates Actually Work, Explained With A Cartoon
The "Skills Gap" Was A Lie
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Floating A 70 Percent Top Tax Rate - Here's The Research That Backs Her Up
America's Middle Class Is Vanishing. Nearly Half Of Workers Earn Less Than $30,000
A Historian Makes The Case Against Billionaires
Scientists Have Established A Link Between Brain Damage And Religious Fundamentalism
How Past Income Tax Rate Cuts On The Wealthy Affected The Economy
The Economics Of Soaking The Rich
How Marginal Tax Rates Actually Work, Explained With A Cartoon
The "Skills Gap" Was A Lie
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Floating A 70 Percent Top Tax Rate - Here's The Research That Backs Her Up
Sunday, March 19, 2017
Sunday Reading
How Milwaukee Shook Off The Rust
Mark Cuban Rips Trump As The Zoolander President
Scott Walker's Promise To Create 250,000 Jobs In Wisconsin Remains Elusive
One Way To Counter Job Killing Robots: Stop The Federal Reserve Board From Raising Interest Rates
What Is Unemployment?
Trump's Industrial Rebirth Is A Dead End
The Truth About Obama's Economic Legacy And Trump's Inheritance
That $1.9 Trillion Cost Of Regulation
Mark Cuban Rips Trump As The Zoolander President
Scott Walker's Promise To Create 250,000 Jobs In Wisconsin Remains Elusive
One Way To Counter Job Killing Robots: Stop The Federal Reserve Board From Raising Interest Rates
What Is Unemployment?
Trump's Industrial Rebirth Is A Dead End
The Truth About Obama's Economic Legacy And Trump's Inheritance
That $1.9 Trillion Cost Of Regulation
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Weekend Reading
GOP Lawmakers To Write Blank Check To Hire Lawyers
Donald Trumps Economic Inheritance In 7 Charts
Janet Yellen Debunks Trump's Case For Killing Dodd-Frank
The Chair Of The Federal Reserve Just Fact-Shamed Donald Trump
Banks Are Lending A Ton, Despite Trump's Claims
Walker Proposes Eliminating Labor, Judicial, Education Oversight Commissions
Four Milwaukee County Retirees Receive Pension Backdrops Topping $1 Million
A Short History Of The Trump Family
Updated Figures Show Manufacturing & Agricultural Tax Credit Is Inefficient, Costly
Pharma's Inflated Claim About Drug R&D Costs
How Drug Companies Inflate Research Costs To Justify Absurd Profits
Walker Proposes New Welfare Work Requirements In Wisconsin
Wilbur Ross And The Era Of Billionaire Rule
The Illusions Driving Up Asset Prices
How Statistics Lost Their Power - And Why We Should Fear What Comes Next
Donald Trumps Economic Inheritance In 7 Charts
Janet Yellen Debunks Trump's Case For Killing Dodd-Frank
The Chair Of The Federal Reserve Just Fact-Shamed Donald Trump
Banks Are Lending A Ton, Despite Trump's Claims
Walker Proposes Eliminating Labor, Judicial, Education Oversight Commissions
Four Milwaukee County Retirees Receive Pension Backdrops Topping $1 Million
A Short History Of The Trump Family
Updated Figures Show Manufacturing & Agricultural Tax Credit Is Inefficient, Costly
Pharma's Inflated Claim About Drug R&D Costs
How Drug Companies Inflate Research Costs To Justify Absurd Profits
Walker Proposes New Welfare Work Requirements In Wisconsin
Wilbur Ross And The Era Of Billionaire Rule
The Illusions Driving Up Asset Prices
How Statistics Lost Their Power - And Why We Should Fear What Comes Next
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Sunday Reading
Confusion About The Financial Crisis Won't Die
Will Bill Privatize Water Utilities?
Is Ted Cruz Right About The Federal Reserve & The Great Recession?
Bill Would Limit City Control Of Development
Zoning Laws Transfer Wealth In The Wrong Direction
The Case Against Bernie Sanders Is Dumb
Can New Approach End Gerrymandering?
Will Bill Privatize Water Utilities?
Is Ted Cruz Right About The Federal Reserve & The Great Recession?
Bill Would Limit City Control Of Development
Zoning Laws Transfer Wealth In The Wrong Direction
The Case Against Bernie Sanders Is Dumb
Can New Approach End Gerrymandering?
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Friday, July 5, 2013
Weekend Reading
Bernanke Was Clear, Fed's Crystal Ball Is Cloudy
The Strange Life Of John Menard
Citigroup Agrees To Pay $968 To Fannie Mae
EU Suspects 13 Banks Of Collusion In Swaps Trading
Labor's Declining Share Is An International Problem
The IRS Scandal Unwinds
America Doesn't Have The Richest Middle Class...We're 27th
10 Brilliant Pieces Of Bike Infrastructure
Why We Trail America In Jobs Growth
The Strange Life Of John Menard
Citigroup Agrees To Pay $968 To Fannie Mae
EU Suspects 13 Banks Of Collusion In Swaps Trading
Labor's Declining Share Is An International Problem
The IRS Scandal Unwinds
America Doesn't Have The Richest Middle Class...We're 27th
10 Brilliant Pieces Of Bike Infrastructure
Why We Trail America In Jobs Growth
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Wisconsin Ranks 49th In Economic Outlook
"In the latest economic indicator that casts Wisconsin in a negative light, the Badger State ranks 49th in the nation in the most recent index from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia."
[source]
For Further Reading:
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Are We "Printing Money"?
Conservatives have a talking-point about the Federal Reserve printing money. The U.S. is (supposedly) continually printing money, running up debt and fanning the flames of inflation. This is debasing the dollar and leading us, in general, toward calamity.
But the real problem is unemployment and its effects on economic growth and, thus, debt reduction. We have a demand-side problem, not a supply-side problem. The longer we go leaving millions without work and wasting their potential, the more we hurt not only them but the entire economy.
"One of the themes I’ve hit on many times is the fact that the crisis and slump have been a testing ground for economic doctrines. People came into this mess with very different views about how the economy works, and the crisis in effect provided natural experiments that tested those views. Most notably, what we got was a test of demand-side versus supply-side stories about the nature of depressions. Demand-siders like me saw this as very much a slump caused by inadequate spending: thanks largely to the overhang of debt from the bubble years, aggregate demand fell, pushing us into a classic liquidity trap. But many people — some of them credentialed economists — insisted that it was actually some kind of supply shock instead. Either they had an Austrian story in which the economy’s productive capacity was undermined by bad investments in the boom, or they claimed that Obama’s high taxes and regulation had undermined the incentive to work (of course, Obama didn’t actually impose high taxes or onerous regulations, but leave that aside for now). How could you tell which story was right? One answer was to look at the behavior of interest rates; the other was to look at inflation. For if you believed a demand-side story, you would also believe that even a large monetary expansion would have little inflationary effect; if you believed a supply-side story, you would expect lots of inflation from too much money chasing a reduced supply of goods. And indeed, people on the right have been forecasting runaway inflation for years now. Yet the predicted inflation keeps not coming," notes Paul Krugman.
Krugman also states, "What’s wrong with the idea that running the printing presses is a giveaway to plutocrats? Let me count the ways. First, as Joe Wiesenthal and Mike Konczal both point out, the actual politics is utterly the reverse of what’s being claimed. Quantitative easing isn’t being imposed on an unwitting populace by financiers and rentiers; it’s being undertaken, to the extent that it is, over howls of protest from the financial industry. I mean, where are the editorials in the WSJ demanding that the Fed raise its inflation target? Beyond that, let’s talk about the economics. The naive (or deliberately misleading) version of Fed policy is the claim that Ben Bernanke is “giving money” to the banks. What it actually does, of course, is buy stuff, usually short-term government debt but nowadays sometimes other stuff. It’s not a gift. To claim that it’s effectively a gift you have to claim that the prices the Fed is paying are artificially high, or equivalently that interest rates are being pushed artificially low. And you do in fact see assertions to that effect all the time. But if you think about it for even a minute, that claim is truly bizarre. I mean, what is the un-artificial, or if you prefer, “natural” rate of interest? As it turns out, there is actually a standard definition of the natural rate of interest, coming from Wicksell, and it’s basically defined on a PPE basis (that’s for proof of the pudding is in the eating). Roughly, the natural rate of interest is the rate that would lead to stable inflation at more or less full employment. And we have low inflation with high unemployment, strongly suggesting that the natural rate of interest is below current levels, and that the key problem is the zero lower bound which keeps us from getting there. Under these circumstances, expansionary Fed policy isn’t some kind of giveway to the banks, it’s just an effort to give the economy what it needs. Furthermore, Fed efforts to do this probably tend on average to hurt, not help, bankers. Banks are largely in the business of borrowing short and lending long; anything that compresses the spread between short rates and long rates is likely to be bad for their profits. And the things the Fed is trying to do are in fact largely about compressing that spread, either by persuading investors that it will keep short rates at zero for a longer time or by going out and buying long-term assets. These are actions you would expect to make bankers angry, not happy — and that’s what has actually happened.
As Dean Baker explained, "In normal times, the economy is, at least partially, supply-constrained. Collectively, we want more goods and services than the economy is capable of producing.... In our demand-constrained economy, how- ever, there is no problem of inflation. The economy can produce more of almost anything right now. The reason that we are not doing it is simply the lack of demand."
Krugman elaborates, "Surely we don’t mean to identify money with pieces of green paper bearing portraits of dead presidents. Even Milton Friedman rejected that, more than half a century ago. For one thing, a lot of those pieces of green paper are pretty much inert — sitting outside the United States, in the hoards of drug dealers and such. For another, checking accounts are clearly a close substitute for cash in hand. Friedman and Schwartz dealt with this by proposing broader aggregates –M1, which adds checking accounts, and M2, which adds a broader range of deposits. And circa 1960 you could argue that those aggregates were good enough. But now we have a large shadow banking system, in which things like repo serve much the same function as deposits; M3 used to capture some of that, but the Fed discontinued it, in part I think because it wasn’t clear which repo belonged there, and data on repo not involving primary dealers is scattered. Whatever. The truth is that these days — with credit cards, electronic money, repo, and more all serving the purpose of medium of exchange — it’s not clear that any single number deserves to be called “the” money supply. Intellectually, this isn’t a problem; nor is there necessarily a problem maintaining monetary policy even if there isn’t any single thing you’re willing to call money. Mike Woodford has been writing about this stuff for years. But if you’re determined to view economic affairs through a sort of paleo-monetarist lens, focused on the evils of “printing money”, you’re going to have a hard time in the modern world, where the definition of money is increasingly vague."
We still have a world more than willing to buy U.S. debt (the dollar is still the world currency and the preferred store of value) and inflation is nowhere in sight.
Here, again, we have the Republicans bloviating to justify their own interests, their discredited worldview, and to enable policies benefiting their cronies. But none of their ideas have anything to do with reality. Yet another talking-point of the right-wing which you would be wise to ignore.
But the real problem is unemployment and its effects on economic growth and, thus, debt reduction. We have a demand-side problem, not a supply-side problem. The longer we go leaving millions without work and wasting their potential, the more we hurt not only them but the entire economy.
"One of the themes I’ve hit on many times is the fact that the crisis and slump have been a testing ground for economic doctrines. People came into this mess with very different views about how the economy works, and the crisis in effect provided natural experiments that tested those views. Most notably, what we got was a test of demand-side versus supply-side stories about the nature of depressions. Demand-siders like me saw this as very much a slump caused by inadequate spending: thanks largely to the overhang of debt from the bubble years, aggregate demand fell, pushing us into a classic liquidity trap. But many people — some of them credentialed economists — insisted that it was actually some kind of supply shock instead. Either they had an Austrian story in which the economy’s productive capacity was undermined by bad investments in the boom, or they claimed that Obama’s high taxes and regulation had undermined the incentive to work (of course, Obama didn’t actually impose high taxes or onerous regulations, but leave that aside for now). How could you tell which story was right? One answer was to look at the behavior of interest rates; the other was to look at inflation. For if you believed a demand-side story, you would also believe that even a large monetary expansion would have little inflationary effect; if you believed a supply-side story, you would expect lots of inflation from too much money chasing a reduced supply of goods. And indeed, people on the right have been forecasting runaway inflation for years now. Yet the predicted inflation keeps not coming," notes Paul Krugman.
Krugman also states, "What’s wrong with the idea that running the printing presses is a giveaway to plutocrats? Let me count the ways. First, as Joe Wiesenthal and Mike Konczal both point out, the actual politics is utterly the reverse of what’s being claimed. Quantitative easing isn’t being imposed on an unwitting populace by financiers and rentiers; it’s being undertaken, to the extent that it is, over howls of protest from the financial industry. I mean, where are the editorials in the WSJ demanding that the Fed raise its inflation target? Beyond that, let’s talk about the economics. The naive (or deliberately misleading) version of Fed policy is the claim that Ben Bernanke is “giving money” to the banks. What it actually does, of course, is buy stuff, usually short-term government debt but nowadays sometimes other stuff. It’s not a gift. To claim that it’s effectively a gift you have to claim that the prices the Fed is paying are artificially high, or equivalently that interest rates are being pushed artificially low. And you do in fact see assertions to that effect all the time. But if you think about it for even a minute, that claim is truly bizarre. I mean, what is the un-artificial, or if you prefer, “natural” rate of interest? As it turns out, there is actually a standard definition of the natural rate of interest, coming from Wicksell, and it’s basically defined on a PPE basis (that’s for proof of the pudding is in the eating). Roughly, the natural rate of interest is the rate that would lead to stable inflation at more or less full employment. And we have low inflation with high unemployment, strongly suggesting that the natural rate of interest is below current levels, and that the key problem is the zero lower bound which keeps us from getting there. Under these circumstances, expansionary Fed policy isn’t some kind of giveway to the banks, it’s just an effort to give the economy what it needs. Furthermore, Fed efforts to do this probably tend on average to hurt, not help, bankers. Banks are largely in the business of borrowing short and lending long; anything that compresses the spread between short rates and long rates is likely to be bad for their profits. And the things the Fed is trying to do are in fact largely about compressing that spread, either by persuading investors that it will keep short rates at zero for a longer time or by going out and buying long-term assets. These are actions you would expect to make bankers angry, not happy — and that’s what has actually happened.
As Dean Baker explained, "In normal times, the economy is, at least partially, supply-constrained. Collectively, we want more goods and services than the economy is capable of producing.... In our demand-constrained economy, how- ever, there is no problem of inflation. The economy can produce more of almost anything right now. The reason that we are not doing it is simply the lack of demand."
Krugman elaborates, "Surely we don’t mean to identify money with pieces of green paper bearing portraits of dead presidents. Even Milton Friedman rejected that, more than half a century ago. For one thing, a lot of those pieces of green paper are pretty much inert — sitting outside the United States, in the hoards of drug dealers and such. For another, checking accounts are clearly a close substitute for cash in hand. Friedman and Schwartz dealt with this by proposing broader aggregates –M1, which adds checking accounts, and M2, which adds a broader range of deposits. And circa 1960 you could argue that those aggregates were good enough. But now we have a large shadow banking system, in which things like repo serve much the same function as deposits; M3 used to capture some of that, but the Fed discontinued it, in part I think because it wasn’t clear which repo belonged there, and data on repo not involving primary dealers is scattered. Whatever. The truth is that these days — with credit cards, electronic money, repo, and more all serving the purpose of medium of exchange — it’s not clear that any single number deserves to be called “the” money supply. Intellectually, this isn’t a problem; nor is there necessarily a problem maintaining monetary policy even if there isn’t any single thing you’re willing to call money. Mike Woodford has been writing about this stuff for years. But if you’re determined to view economic affairs through a sort of paleo-monetarist lens, focused on the evils of “printing money”, you’re going to have a hard time in the modern world, where the definition of money is increasingly vague."
We still have a world more than willing to buy U.S. debt (the dollar is still the world currency and the preferred store of value) and inflation is nowhere in sight.
Here, again, we have the Republicans bloviating to justify their own interests, their discredited worldview, and to enable policies benefiting their cronies. But none of their ideas have anything to do with reality. Yet another talking-point of the right-wing which you would be wise to ignore.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Ruinous Wall Street
"Plus, there's the fact that the entire industry continues to get preferential treatment from the government -- be it the $700 billion bailout in 2008 or the ongoing right to borrow massive amounts of essentially free money from the Federal Reserve, then turn around and loan it, risk free, to Uncle Sam at 1.5% or more per year, thus pocketing billions in easy money," reports Anthony Mirhaydari.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
U.S. Real Estate
Commercial Real Estate Prices for United States
Delinquency Rate On Loans Secured By Real Estate, All Commercial Banks
Loans Secured By Real Estate, All Commercial Banks
Owners' Equity in Household Real Estate - Net Worth - Balance Sheet of Households and Nonprofit Organizations
Real Estate - Assets - Balance Sheet of Households and Nonprofit Organizations
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Weekend Reading
Bradley Foundation Builds Conservative Empire
For Business, Golden Days; For Workers, The Dross
House Prices & Current Account Deficits
Mackinac Center Emails Reveal True Motives
Quality Doesn't Follow Rise In Voucher Schools
$7.7 Trillion in Secret Federal Reserve Loans To Banks?
State Jobs Carried An Asterisk
Structure Of Excuses
Take A Stand Against School Vouchers
Why School Choice Fails
For Business, Golden Days; For Workers, The Dross
House Prices & Current Account Deficits
Mackinac Center Emails Reveal True Motives
Quality Doesn't Follow Rise In Voucher Schools
$7.7 Trillion in Secret Federal Reserve Loans To Banks?
State Jobs Carried An Asterisk
Structure Of Excuses
Take A Stand Against School Vouchers
Why School Choice Fails
Friday, August 19, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
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