Over at WaPo. I left one extra-wonky point out of the piece, which deserves mention here. There’s an interesting way in which a more hawkish Fed chair–and most of the top candidates other than Yellen fit that bill–would be a double whammy for Trump. First, raising rates would slow growth, which presidents never like. Second,… Read more
Archive for the ‘Federal Reserve’ Category
Quick note on inflation, exchange rates, and wages
A few weeks back, I did some simple modelling of the impact of the weakening dollar on US inflation, suggesting it would boost price growth a bit, but was nothing to get wound up about. And, of course, a little more inflation would be welcomed. Researchers at Goldman Sachs took an interesting, deeper dive into… Read more
A few links: eroding norms and the limits of presidents re the economy
I’ve had a couple of WaPo posts out to which I’ve been meaning to link. This first one, on the warp speed of norm erosion in the Trump era, has the interesting feature that its shelf life was vastly shortened by the Mooch getting the bootch later in the very day I posted. Of course,… Read more
Fed holds steady, and for now, the dollar is helping with inflation.
The Federal Reserve’s interest-rate-setting committee just wrapped up their meeting and as predicted, announced that they’ll hold rates steady. Markets were interested in any guidance on when the central bank would start slowly unwinding its balance sheet, to which the Fed’s statement said, “relatively soon.” So, not a lot to see here folks…move along. Yet… Read more
How R’s on the House Finance Committee want to go after the Fed’s independence, and why that’s a terrible idea.
I testified this AM at the House Finance subcommittee on monetary and fiscal policy. Three R witnesses and yours truly, so I didn’t get to say all I wanted—after all, monetary and fiscal covers a lot of ground! So, why else have a blog if I can’t use it to post the stuff I didn’t have… Read more