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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.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, Treasury Secretary Geithner—and Secretary of State Clinton—meet with a high-level Chinese delegation.
According to official previews (i.e., the apparent contents of background briefings given to wire services), the economic topics are China’s concerns about the value of the dollar (i.e., their [...]
Over the past six months, officials and commentators have raised questions about the reserve currency role of the US dollar and the structure of the international monetary system. None of their questions is new; they all date back at least to the break-up of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange [...]
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas recently suggested the US labor market in the current recession is now breaking the law—Okun’s Law, that is.1 Larry Summers would seem to agree. In a revelatory aside during his speech at the Peterson Institute on July 17, the head of President Obama’s [...]
At a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee on July 21, Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services committee, nicely summarized where we are with regard to re-regulation of our largest financial institutions: some of them are definitely “too big to fail,” with the potential to present [...]
Central bank independence is like motherhood and apple pie: Who can oppose it? We know from voluminous academic research that independent central banks tend to deliver better macroeconomic outcomes and in particular lower inflation. It is therefore unnerving that many members of Congress are calling for limits on the Fed’s powers, [...]