The Federal Reserve Can Neither Cause Nor Deter a Recession
Talent matched with capital drives all economic advance, always and everywhere. Archaeologists will marvel at how many smart people bought into the Fed myth either way.
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Essays
Writing by John Tamny and Parkview contributors, from the latest commentary to the collected archive.
110 essays · Newest first
Clear filtersWhy On Earth Would Soft Hiring ‘Tee Up Fed Rate Cuts’?
Marks came to mind while reading a front page Wall Street Journal story in response to Friday’s employment report. It read along the lines of “Soft Hiring Will Tee Up Fed Rate Cuts.”
Nvidia Has Been Quite Relevant To Stocks, Which Means the Fed Can’t Be
Last Tuesday Nvidia shed over $279 billion in value. It was the biggest one-day paper loss for a corporation in the history of the stock market. As a CNN report put it, “only 27 companies on the…
Royal Caribbean’s Utopia of the Seas Is a Monument to Fed Irrelevance
Freedom lovers will love what’s ahead because inequality is the surest sign (and feature) of freedom, and also the most certain sign that former luxuries are being made commonplace. As always, the…
Kevin Warsh Is a Worrisome Reminder of Ben Bernanke
The Fed is no longer the backstop to the financial system on a dark day. It’s the dominant player day in and day out.” Those are the dispiriting words of former Federal Reserve Board member Kevin…
As Electric Vehicle Prices Decline, Will the Federal Reserve Step In?
Will the Federal Reserve fiddle with rates more to fight what economists imagine deflation to be? If the question reads as flippant, that’s because it is
‘Harris for President’ As a Metaphor for a Powerless Fed
The transformation of the Democratic Party donor class from despondent to ebullient in a matter of minutes instructs us in ways well beyond Joe Biden attempting to pass the torch to Kamala Harris.
Monetarism Didn’t Discredit the Phillips Curve, Rather It Mirrors It
Monetarism: Government has no resources. It can only spend what it’s taken from us first.
Janet Yellen Is the Big Threat to the U.S. Economy, Not China
Janet Yellen asserted that “if we do not respond strategically and in a united way” to “China’s industrial policy,” the “viability of businesses in both our countries and around the world could be at…
The Fed Extols the Virtues of Cake to Debit-Card Users
Put another way, the Fed’s imposition of price ceilings on debit cards will be felt most uncomfortably by those with the most limited access to banking and its various services.
Every So Often Ben Bernanke Reminds Us Why Economists Are So Dangerous
Bernanke’s belief that the Fed’s efforts to foster fake Treasury yields, fake equity and corporate bond prices, more housing consumption, and a weaker dollar are remarkable not just for how much his…
Donald’s Plan To Run the Fed Shames Trump and His Critics
Trump’s delusions, and the gnashing of the teeth of his critics, are yet another reminder that the Fed’s powers over interest rates are vastly overstated.
Opposite Monetarists, Neo-Austrians and Keynesians, Wealth Isn’t Money
Money in circulation is an exacting market phenomenon, opposite Monetarists, Neo-Austrians and Keynesians, and it is because goods, services and labor always and everywhere buy goods, services, and…
What On Earth Do Fed Rate Hikes Have To Do With Lower Prices?
Fed watchers and economists write about and watch the Fed with breathy intensity. Can it bring prices down? No, it can’t.
A Look at Hasbro’s ‘Monopoly’ To Calm the Nerves of Monetarists
Inflation is a policy choice of governments that long predates central banks that the various economic religions have oddly happened on as the creator and fix for inflation.
Central Banks Neither Own Debt Nor ‘Print Money’ To Buy It
It’s popular among the conspiracy-minded and central bank-obsessed (frequently the two go together) to suggest that governments establish central banks to buy their debt. The very notion is…
The Federal Reserve’s Challenge Is Economists, Not Too Much Growth
There was a time when it was accepted wisdom at the Hoover Institution that market interventions slowed economic output. How things change.
Christopher Waller’s Inflation ‘Prescience’ Didn’t Much Exceed Lawrence Summers’s
As always, rising prices can’t cause inflation any more than falling prices can cause deflation. Both are currency phenomena born of currency instability either in the direction of weakness or…
Can the Fed Increase the Rate of Interest Charged to Taylor Swift?
At the Wall Street Journal, Fed-watcher Timiraos writes that with government measures of inflation having “fallen much faster than expected,” nominal interest rates “adjusted for inflation” have…
Only An Economist Could Believe In the Impossibility That Is Monetarism
If a recession is coming, or for that matter growth, money in circulation will reflect either scenario without regard to the central plans of economists and those who revere them.
Relax, the Fed Can’t Do What David Stockman Thinks It Can
The happy, market truth is that no individual, no business, no city block, no city, state, or country ever needs to worry about having too much or too little money.
The Federal Reserve’s Sizeable Irrelevance Is The ‘Inflation’ Lesson
In her latest opinion piece for the Washington Post, economics writer Heather Long observed about Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that “Many had predicted he would be Dr. Doom who caused a…
Xi Jinping Can’t Prop Up Chinese Shares Much As Fed Can’t U.S. Shares
For every excited or optimistic buyer in any market to express the excitement or optimism, there must be a seller willing to transact. This has seemingly been forgotten by China’s Xi Jinping
Claudia Sahm Yearns For a ‘Soft Landing’ That the Fed Can’t Engineer
Former Fed official Claudia Sahm believes a tight Fed “could still ruin” what she imagines could be a soft landing.