Interest rates are historically low and so is the return on savings. People commonly talk about low interest rates being an inducement to increase spending and reduce saving. In fact, this is one of the […]
Read morePreviously published on Friday, June 10th, 2016 on pacbiztimes.com By Dan E. Hamilton Since 2008, the Federal Reserve has been engaged in an unprecedented experiment, one without any economic theory to recommend it. Its policies […]
Read morePreviously published on Friday, May 27th 2016 on pacbiztimes.com By Matthew Fienup As forecasts of torrential El Nino rains have given way to the hard reality of another year of drought on the Central Coast, […]
Read moreIn his book The End of Alchemy, former Bank of England Chairman Mervyn King has presented a riveting treatise on banking, monetary policy, financial crises and financial regulation. The title of the book refers to […]
Read moreWe need to find a way to separate our fiscal and monetary policies. Previously published on June 17, 2016 on city-journal.org Never heard of fiscal dominance? Don’t worry, you have lots of company. Even many […]
Read moreLike the Orcas at Sea World, the mortgage market has been coddled by government support for more than half a century. Having decided Orcas would be better off in the wild, Sea World has announced […]
Read moreWhen talking about the national debt, people tend to use absolute metrics like the size of the outstanding federal debt ($19 trillion total, $14 trillion held by the public) or ratios like the ratio the […]
Read moreIn previous blogs we have discussed appropriate debt levels for nonfinancial companies and for large banks. What about for the individual household? Sometimes, households are ‘credit-constrained’ in that they cannot find borrowers to lend them […]
Read morePreviously published on April 14, 2016 on Newgeography.com Most commentary on California’s decision to increase the state minimum wage to $15 over time is either along the lines of it being a boon to minimum-wage […]
Read moreLarge banks (think of Wells Fargo, Citicorp, JP Morgan and Bank of America) today hold equity capital roughly equal to about ten percent of total assets. Inverting that ratio we get assets to equity of […]
Read moreBy Bill Watkins – Previously Published in the Pacific Coast Business Times In popular culture, there are “good” industries and “evil” industries. Oil has held the most hated position of the evil list for generations […]
Read moreIn a recent made-for-TV movie actor Richard Dreyfuss plays hedge fund manager Bernie Madoff, creator of one of the all-time great Ponzi Schemes. A Ponzi Scheme, named after an Italian crook of the early 20th […]
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