The Federal Reserve has been oddly quiet this holiday season. However, members of congress have not. Only a few days before the new year, on December 29 , President Biden signed the $1.7 trillion government funding bill known as the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023. So, what do you get for $1.7 trillion these days? The answer is not much, if
Another month has passed, and the Federal Reserve has once again been able to shrink its balance sheet. It’s now 7 months since the official start of Quantitative Tightening (QT). As of last release , on Thursday, their balance sheet stood at $8.507 trillion. The long-term chart reveals it’s much easier to expand the balance sheet than to shrink
The average price of eggs increased by 49%, butter/margarine by 34% year-over-year, CNBC reported as of November. Yet, with his first speech of the year, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressed the issue of the Fed’s independence. Yes, the conference was on Central Bank independence. But how many Americans have any concern, or the slightest
Everyone is blaming Jerome Powell for something these days, like the stock market selloff that followed the Fed Chair’s testimony to Congress this week. But do these critiques suffer from a lack of depth? On Wednesday, Fortune published an article showing how mainstream academics view the Fed. Various quotes foreshadow what the general public is
What a weekend! On Sunday morning Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CBS there would be no bailouts. Later that day the Fed declared Quantitative Easing to infinity and beyond. What’s going on? Quite simply: the Fed is willing to overpay for debt (again). They call it the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), and as far as one can tell, its dollar
A few days from now marks the one-year anniversary of the article: Will You Buy the Dip? It was there I told everyone I know that eventually the Federal Reserve will conclude its Quantitative Tightening (QT), and a new round of Quantitative Easing (QE) would emerge. This was both inherent and inevitable due to the inflationary nature of central
After raising rates by 25-bps on Wednesday, in addition to lending $300 billion to bankrupt institutions last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reassures the public that the banking system is “sound and resilient” to quell concerns over recent bank failures. Reiterating : In addition, we are committed to learning the lessons from this
Leave it to the Federal Reserve to throw a knuckleball when the batter is expecting a fastball. These last few weeks have been just that, with the Fed saying nothing of abandoning their Quantitative Tightening (QT) position while engaging in what appears to be a Quantitative Easing (QE) position. The general public may be familiar with the term
At the Austrian Economic Research Conference (AERC 2023) event in Auburn, Alabama, behind a wooden podium once used by Ludwig von Mises, I presented my paper: The Instability of Stablecoins. Whether it’s called a pyramid, ponzi, shell game, or a grand delusion containing fraudulent elements, there’s something peculiar going on in the stablecoin
On Saturday, Dr. Mark Thornton published a 3-minute recording for Minor Issues podcast on The Fed’s 2% Inflation Target . It had the usual honesty, integrity and simplicity readers of the Mises Institute are accustomed, with the introduction reading: Mark Thornton explains the target as another smokescreen that was originally intended to stabilize
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The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.