 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Sign up to receive automatic updates to RealTime Economic Issues Watch.
A website forum in which senior fellows of the Peterson Institute for International Economics discuss and debate their responses to global economic and financial developments as they occur each day and offer insights that others might overlook.
In his testimony [pdf] to the Congress this week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke left the door open to further monetary stimulus but made it clear that such action is not imminent. This reluctance to act may seem puzzling given the widespread view that the economic recovery is too weak. In [...]
I am not able these days to make as much time as I would like to read whole books, but during a recent vacation I was able to finish Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed. I recommend it to anyone interested in the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, both before [...]
With all the current attention to the reappointment vote on Fed Chairman Bernanke, we would direct people to our recent paper, "Do Markets Care Who Chairs the Central Bank?", forthcoming in next month’s issue of the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. In it, we make the first ever assessment of [...]
On November 19, the House Financial Services Committee passed an amendment to its financial reform legislation that would authorize the General Accountability Office (GAO) to audit all aspects of the Federal Reserve’s operations. The amendment—sponsored by Representative Ron Paul, the libertarian Texas Republican whose book “End the Fed” [...]
One of the most striking features of today’s economy is that interest rates, on everything from bank loans to Treasury bonds, are at 50-year lows. Federal Reserve actions to stabilize the financial system and stimulate economic growth contributed importantly to these low rates. There is much talk lately of the need [...]