Latest
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“AIG Repayment Prospects Fade”
“Taxpayers have lent AIG $132.6 billion, but the probability that the government would recoup all of those funds fell even further this week after the insurer failed to complete a crucial asset sale. AIG had agreed in March to sell Asian life insurance unit AIA to Prudential PLC for $35.5 billion, but AIG terminated that…
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“Fed Bank Chief Calls for Interest Rate Hikes”
“Thomas Hoenig, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, is cementing his reputation as the best friend of savers with money in the bank. Hoenig, who has a seat on the Fed’s interest-rate committee, on Thursday called for the central bank to raise its benchmark short-term rate to 1% “by the end…
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What Financial Re-Regulation?
“In two weeks, I am supposed to speak on a panel entitled “Financial Re-regulation.” My question is, what re-regulation? To me, re-regulation means you would reverse some step that you took toward deregulation. But the new financial reform bill does not reverse any of those steps, as far as I know. For example, the new…
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Implicit Inflation
The problem of inflation is a major concern in economics; it gives rise to economic discoordination and affects the distribution of wealth. Among most economists, inflation is generally seen just as a sustained increase in the level of prices, and not as a broader problem arising initially from monetary disturbances. In his The Theory of…
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“Bernanke Continues Fight Against More Fed Scrutiny”
“With Congress getting close to finalizing an overhaul of the nation’s financial-regulatory system, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke weighed in against provisions in the proposed legislation that would subject the central bank to more political scrutiny. In a speech at the Bank of Japan on Wednesday, the Fed chief argued before an international audience that…
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Bank of Canada Raises Overnight Rate
“The Bank of Canada today announced that it is raising its target for the overnight rate by one-quarter of one percentage point to 1/2 per cent. The Bank Rate is correspondingly raised to 3/4 per cent and the deposit rate is kept at 1/4 per cent, thus re-establishing the normal operating band of 50 basis…
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Crisis Risk Moves from Credit to Politics
“The causes of the global financial crisis of 2008 were almost entirely flaws in the credit system based on leverage, exotic financial instruments, and a sharp drop in American housing prices. Just as that cycle has begun to end, and GDP in major nations has begun to recover, another potentially damaging set of risks has…
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Doug Bandow Reviews “Money, Markets and Sovereignty”
“The era of laissez-faire capitalism is over, it is said, as if the era of laissez-faire capitalism ever really began. Still, globalization has helped open markets around the world. At a time of economic crisis, Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds mount a well-documented defense of globalization, ‘the extension of consensual economic exchange across borders.’ They…
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Bill Anderson on the Weak Dollar
“Mike Van Winkle asks Prof. Bill Anderson of Frostburg State University What is a weak dollar? And why does it matter?” Listen in here. First Principles Episode 12: The weak dollar; does it matter? Via the Foundation for Economic Education. Image by renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
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Exonerating the Community Reinvestment Act by Steve Horwitz
In my various talks and written work on the financial crisis and the recession, I’ve taken pains to minimize the responsibility assigned to the Community Reinvestment Act for causing the high-risk loans that led to so much trouble. This point often bothers many free market types in the audience/readership who are convinced the CRA was…
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