Economy News

from AIER

Established 1999

New England, USA

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    “Fed Official Warns of Starting a Cycle of Boom and Bust”

    “In a sharply worded dissent to the Federal Reserve’s decision to help ease the supply of credit to the economy, a member of the Fed committee that sets interest rates said Friday that the central bank’s monetary strategy could backfire and touch off a new boom-and-bust cycle. The member, Thomas M. Hoenig, the president of…

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    Idle Resources Don’t Eliminate Inflation

    One of the gravest sins of modern economics is its tendency to treat resources, both capital and labor, as essentially homogenous aggregates. Capital is more or less interchangeable with other capital, and labor is treated much the same. One reason for this is that such homogeneity and aggregation make mathematical modeling much more tractable, as…

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    The immorality of today’s monetary policy

    I have been reading Buying at the Point of Maximum Pessimism (FT Press, 2010), by Scott Phillips. Before introducing his “six value investment trends” he devotes close to 100 pages to describe what went wrong in the US economy. When he addresses current inflationary policies, he states “Technology is amazing: a policy maker’s ability to…

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    Europe Jumps Off the Keynesian Bus — WSJ

    By ALLAN H. MELTZER — President Obama is the victim of bad advice and misinformation. From his advisers, the Democratic caucus and the New York Times, he hears that markets have failed and the country needs more government spending to increase consumer spending. He is told that any plan to reduce government spending and the…

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    “The Austrian Theory: One More Time”

    “The Austrian theory is not a theory of recessions per se; it is a theory of the unsustainable boom. As such, it has a much stronger link to the underlying microeconomics than does much of today’s mainstream theorizing. The Austrians focus broadly on credit markets and ask what happens when the price of credit, i.e.,…

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    Monetary Policy and Productivity

    “This relationship holds, I believe, because low inflation tends to focus people’s attention on productive investments at the same time it promotes confidence by delivering stability, while high inflation tends to encourage speculative investments and discourage investment because it increases uncertainty. If prices are generally stable, for example, then it is difficult to make money…

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    “Fed Economic Outlook Sends Investors to Gold”

    “The Fed’s commitment to maintaining liquidity and its deteriorating growth outlook are broadly speaking bullish for gold,” said Standard Bank analyst Leon Westgate. Gold is often seen as a stronger store of value than equities and other commodities in times of economic uncertainty, and the metal gained ground after the Federal Open Market Committee on…

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    “Perspectives on the U.S. Economy: Fiscal Policy Issues”

    “A clear and credible path of fiscal consolidation is clearly needed and would do much to remove uncertainty about future policy and thereby build confidence. The reason why such a plan is not being articulated and carried out now is an apparent concern that such a consolidation would remove needed stimulus from the economy. In…

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    Deflation and Liberty

    “The link between the paper dollar and the exponential expansion of public debt is well known. From the point of view of the creditors, the federal government controls the Federal Reserve—the monopoly producer of paper dollars—and it can therefore never go bankrupt. If necessary, the federal government can have any quantity of dollars printed to…

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    “The High Costs of Very Low Interest Rates”

    “The prevailing view among economists, policy makers and Federal Reserve Board governors is that a zero or near-zero short-term interest rate stimulates the economy—the lower the rate, the better. It is time to re-examine this conventional wisdom. In fact, lowering interest rates too much may not stimulate recovery, but actually slow it. Yes, there are…