The six Federal Reserve facts that we need to know relate to why it was created, what it always does, and what is happening now.…
Weekly Roundup: From the Diner’s Dilemma to Lost Labor
This week’s economic news summary includes the diner’s dilemma and marginal analysis, property rights in outer space, the Phillip’s Curve and unemployment.…
The Impact of a Legendary Economics Curve
Showing the connection between inflation and unemployment, the Phillips Curve has been re-interpreted, re-affirmed and condemned as a monetary policy tool.…
Our Weekly Roundup: From Misery to Chocolate
This week’s everyday economics stories involved quantitative easing, monetary and fiscal policy, supply and demand, ROI, GDP, unemployment and inflation.…
How Does a Helicopter Drop $4 Trillion?
When the Federal Reserve’s three basic monetary policy tools did not work, it created quantitative easing to up economic growth and decrease unemployment.…
Inflation: What A Billion Prices Tell Us
Every year, my class meets Harriet Shaw through a PBS NewsHour broadcast from 1991. An economic assistant for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), she is a professional shopper who tracks prices. In …
Monetary Policy: The Cost of QE3
Quantitative easing began and continues in front of a computer. If you had visited the Fed when QE1 was being implemented, you would have seen several people, daily, sitting in front of a computer, se…
Monetary Policy: The Punch Bowl
Sort of like Max in Maurice Sendak’s, Where the Wild Things Are, the Federal Reserve sometimes says, “And now, let the wild rumpus start.” Then though, Max cries out, “Now stop…
Monetary Policy: QE Insight
At a 2002 conference honoring Milton Friedman on his 90th birthday, then Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke concluded his remarks with… “Regarding the Great Depression. You’re rig…
The Fed Debate
10 years ago, the future Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said to Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, “Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But…