News
Bloomberg | Euro Gets Cold Shoulder at Ballot Box of Anger: Jens Bastian
The first of seven regional elections in Germany this year left no doubt about where German voters stand on a much larger issue: the euro crisis.
Econ Comments
AEI | No Time for US Schadenfreude over Europe
After many years of being at the receiving end of European lectures as to the superiority of Europe's economic and social model, it is all too tempting for Americans to derive satisfaction from Europe's present sovereign debt crisis.
Minyanville | Why Monetary Policy Doesn't Cause Higher Agricultural Commodity Prices
Though excess monetary creation creates an inflationary environment, we can't blame it for floods, droughts that have wreaked havoc on wheat, cotton and sugar markets.
POLITICO | Fed fix needed on debit swipe fees
Sometimes a free market does not – or cannot – correct a divergence from the competitive norm. When these persist over time or worsen, it is among the few scenarios where there is reason for government to examine, and possibly correct, the cause. This is why the Federal Reserve’s proposed rule to limit debit-card “swipe fees,” a measure called for in the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, is justifiable public policy — and overdue.
Minyanville Why the Fed Is Likely to Start Tightening in the Third Quarter
A sustained improvement in consumer sentiment in the next few months will have some hawks raising their heads in the FOMC as headline inflation is also turning for the worse.
Pittsburgh Tribune Review | Inflation's worst consequence
The biggest problem with inflation is that it interferes with the system of communication that markets use to inform workers, investors, entrepreneurs, businesses and consumers about how they can best achieve their economic goals given the underlying economic realities. That system is prices.
Blogs
The Economist: Economics by Invitation | Is the modern central bank in need of reform?
How should monetary policymaking change? Should central banks have a larger or smaller regulatory role? Is independence all it's cracked up to be? Or are modern central banks the best we can hope for?
WSJ: Real Time Economics | Fed’s Plosser: Would Consider Early QE2 End If Economy Accelerates More
One of the Federal Reserve‘s leading hawks warned Wednesday of the risks of maintaining easy monetary policy in the face of rising commodity prices and said if the recovery continues to pick up speed, he’d support curtailing the bond-buying program widely known as QE2.
WSJ: Real Time Economics | Fed’s Hoenig: Easy Money And Too-Big-To-Fail Must End
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig on Wednesday said the U.S. central bank was risking a new financial crisis with its easy-money policies and urged regulators to break up the biggest banks.
