News
Washington Times | Fed to spend $40 billion a month on bond purchases
The Federal Reserve unleashed a series of aggressive actions Thursday intended to stimulate the still-weak economy by making it cheaper for consumers and businesses to borrow and spend.
Market Watch | Fed to launch QE3 by buying mortgage securities
The Federal Reserve, worried that improvement in the unemployment rate has stalled, announced a third round of bond purchases on Thursday in an effort to bring down long-term interest rates and spur economic growth.
Econ Comments & Analysis
National Journal | Fed to Politicians: We’re Not Swayed
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke doesn’t care about Capitol Hill or campaign-trail bullies. He has said repeatedly as the central bank has come under a political magnifying glass this year: The Fed bases its decisions on economics, not politics.
Washington Post | A different kind of inflation problem
Fortunately, not everything is up to date in Kansas City. Esther George, president of the regional Federal Reserve Bank here, is refreshingly retrograde regarding what less circumspect people welcome as the modernizing of the nation’s central bank into a central economic planner.
Market Watch | FDIC chief: more lending key to economy
The chief of a key bank regulator on Friday argued that hikes in lending by financial institutions - not reducing loan-loss reserves -- is a necessary condition for growing the economy.
WSJ | Bernanke Unbounded
So much for fears that the Federal Reserve might disappoint Wall Street. Chairman Ben Bernanke and his music men at the Fed's Open Market Committee put on their party hats Thursday and unleashed an unlimited program of monetary easing. The move exceeded even Wall Street's expectations, but whether it will help the real economy in the long term is doubtful.
Heritage Foundation | Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing: Wrong Medicine for an Ailing Economy
The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee announced today that it would pursue $40 billion in additional monthly stimulus in the form of quantitative easing.
Blogs
WSJ | A Look Inside the Fed’s Balance Sheet
The Federal Reserve‘s declaration of a new bond-buying program will begin bulking back of a balance sheet that has been basically flat for more than a year.
Economist | The power of positive thinking
Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve reached a crossroads. It had lowered short-term interest rates to zero and promised to keep them there until 2013, and then 2014. It had undertaken multiple rounds of bond purchases to lower long-term interest rates. Yet the recovery was actually losing steam; unemployment had stopped falling.
Heritage Foundation | Energy Department Touts Solar Power That Generates 0.14% of Electricity
The U.S. Department of Energy this week touted the growth of solar power, complete with an impressive chart that boasts, “Solar Generation Has a Bright Future.” Yet a closer look at solar’s overall role reveals that it represented just 0.14 percent of the total electric power generated and consumed in June.
Daily Capitalist | The Fed Panicked
The bottom line is that the Fed panicked. It is extraordinary that the Fed would announce an open-ended “we’ll print as much as it takes, as long as it takes” policy. Chairman Bernanke is sending a signal to the markets and to government that the economy is bad and getting worse and that the Fed will do its part as everyone expects them to do.
WSJ | Fed Pushes Out Rate-Hike Expectations, Lowers 2012 Growth View
Federal Reserve policy makers pushed out expectations of the first hike in short-term rates, and lowered their expectations for growth this year in quarterly forecasts released Thursday.
