On January 25th, I wrote about the increasing borrowing activity taking place at the Fed’s discount window. I commented that, despite popular perceptions, not all the borrowing at the discount […]
Tag: Financial Markets
Silicon Valley Bank: Bespoke, Woke, and Restoked?
As these things tend to, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has given rise to a host of wide-ranging discussions. Again comes a long weekend of fear and conjecture, […]
Persistently Pesky Price Pressures
Inflation remains stubbornly high. The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCEPI), which is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, increased 0.6 percent in January, higher than most analysts had expected. […]
More Interest Rate Hikes Ahead
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its latest personal consumption expenditures price index (PCEPI) estimation on February 24. The PCEPI is the Fed’s favored measure of inflation. The latest release […]
Risky Business: A Review
In Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It (Yale University Press, 2023), economists Liran Einav (Stanford), Amy Finkelstein (MIT), and Ray Fisman (Boston U.) attempt […]
Inflation Surges in January
After eight rate hikes from the Federal Reserve in the last year and declining inflation during the back half of 2022, many had hoped the worst of the price increases […]
What’s Up (and Down) With the Economy?
Will the economy grow or shrink in 2023? That is the trillion-dollar question. Some say shrink, some say grow, but maybe the smartest of all say “I dunno.” Soon after […]
Government Siphon Targets Corporate Stock Buybacks
During last night’s State of the Union, President Joe Biden announced a quadrupling of the corporate buyback tax, which was introduced in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The tax will […]
Rising Use of the Fed’s Discount Window Raises Questions
In the early days of the COVID pandemic, the Federal Reserve and central banks around the world pulled out all the stops. Policy rates were yanked to Zero Interest Rate […]
Does the Fed Control Interest Rates?
An interest rate is a price: the price of rented capital. Alternatively, interest is the price of time. It’s the cost borrowers pay to transfer purchasing power from their future […]