Tag: Ben Bernanke
William Shughart | Monday May 7, 2012 at 7:12 PM PDT | 3 Comments
Now that France’s incumbent President Sarkozy has been defeated at the polls by socialist candidate M. Hollande, Americans should have gotten a wake-up call. Angela Merkel now seems to be the only voice of European reason in the rising popular tide against budgetary austerity and a return to the by now old-fashioned idea that...
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Tags: Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Government subsidies, Great Depression, Obamacare, recession, Socialism, The State
Jonathan Bean | Thursday January 12, 2012 at 3:52 PM PDT | 5 Comments
[*UPDATE: Fed Joked About Housing Crash in 2006! Here is a good interview from PBS] “Tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right.” “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” —John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government “The historian is . . . one step nearer to direct power over public opinion than is the theorist.” —Friedrich A. von...
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Tags: American History, Austrian School of Economics, Ben Bernanke, Economics, Education, Federal Reserve, Great Depression, Money and Banking
William Shughart | Thursday October 20, 2011 at 7:33 PM PDT | 1 Comment
Eastern bloc economists Carmen Reinhart, she of the University of Maryland, and Kenneth Rogoff, he of Harvard, have gotten rave reviews for This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, published in 2009 by Princeton University Press. I started reading it today, now that the book is out in paperback. It didn’t take...
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Tags: Bailouts, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, Budget and Tax Policy, FDR, Federal Reserve, Government subsidies, Great Depression, Inflation, New Deal, stimulus
Carl Close | Tuesday March 22, 2011 at 9:49 AM PDT | 0 Comments
[Cross-posted in the March 22 issue of The Lighthouse, the Independent Institute’s weekly email newsletter. Sign up for your free subscription here.] We are delighted to announce the publication of the Spring 2011 issue of the Independent Institute’s peer-reviewed journal, The Independent Review, edited by Senior Fellow Robert Higgs. This issue’s articles and book...
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Tags: American History, Austrian School of Economics, Ayn Rand, Bailouts, Ben Bernanke, Books, Charity, Civil Liberties, Civil Society, classical liberal, conservatism, Conservatism, Constitution, Corporatism, Disaster Management, disaster victims, Economics, Elections, European Central Bank, Federal Reserve, Free Market, Hurricane Katrina, Immigration, Independent Institute, Inflation, Law, libertarianism, Liberty, Money and Banking, monopoly, Morality, Obama, Philosophy, Politics, Property Rights, Regulation, Robert Higgs, The State, U.S. Constitution, Unemployment, welfare state, William Marina
William Shughart | Tuesday January 25, 2011 at 6:30 AM PDT | 2 Comments
In the run-up to President Obama’s “State of the Union” address this evening, the nation’s monetary and fiscal policymakers seem, as often is true, to be working at cross-purposes. According to reports published in The Wall Street Journal yesterday (January 24, 2011), Chairman Ben Bernanke at long last has concluded that the Fed should...
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Tags: Ben Bernanke, Budget and Tax Policy, economic stimulus, Economics, Employment, Federal Reserve, Fiscal policy, government spending, Humphrey-Hawkins, Inflation, Money and Banking, Politics, President Obama, Presidential Power, State of the Union, Unemployment
William Shughart | Tuesday December 28, 2010 at 7:29 AM PDT | 2 Comments
According to the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Rapoport (“Bailed-Out Banks Slip toward Failure”, 12/27/2010, p. C1), 98 U.S. financial institutions, which collectively were granted $4.2 billion in handouts under Washington’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), are in danger of going belly-up. The commercial banks imminently in peril, such as the Legacy Bank of Milwaukee...
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Tags: Bailouts, Ben Bernanke, Corporatism, Economics, Fannie Mae, Federal Reserve, Freddie Mac, Housing, Money and Banking, regime uncertainty, Regulation, Robert Higgs, TARP
William Shughart | Thursday September 16, 2010 at 6:17 AM PDT | 13 Comments
The most recent quote reported in the Wall Street Journal (September 15, 2010) values gold at $1,268.50 per ounce, a historic high, albeit unadjusted for inflation. Will rosy expectations never fail to persist? It is certainly true that the expansionary policies currently being pursued by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke auger much higher future rates...
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Tags: Ben Bernanke, central banking, Federal Reserve, gold, hedge, Inflation, Money and Banking
William Shughart | Sunday August 29, 2010 at 6:10 AM PDT | 5 Comments
Economists and pundits, who contend that the Federal Reserve System has little room to maneuver in using monetary policy to jump-start our anemic economy, often have claimed that America is mired in a Keynesian liquidity trap, a situation in which the demand for money is unresponsive to changes in market interest rates. After all,...
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Tags: Ben Bernanke, Budget and Tax Policy, Federal Reserve, Inflation, Keynesian economics, liquidity trap, Money and Banking, recession
David J. Theroux | Wednesday June 2, 2010 at 9:46 PM PDT | 0 Comments
Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs is interviewed on “Government’s Intrusions Threaten Economy.” Interviewed by Steve Stanek of the Heartland Institute, Dr. Higgs explains that the government’s growing intrusions into the economy—bank bailouts, economic stimulus, interest rate manipulations and credit expansion by the Federal Reserve, increased business regulations—could eventually lead to soaring price inflation...
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Tags: American History, bailout, Bailouts, Ben Bernanke, Budget and Tax Policy, Corporatism, economic stimulus, Economics, Employment, Federal Reserve, Free Market, Government subsidies, Great Depression, Heartland Institute, Inflation, interest rate, Liberty, Money and Banking, Nationalization, Personal Liberty, recession, Regulation, Socialism, Taxation, The State, Unemployment
David Beito | Wednesday February 24, 2010 at 1:26 PM PDT | 12 Comments
After Ron Paul raised questions about possible past Federal Reserve misdeeds including allegations of involvement in Watergate payoffs, Ben Bernanke answered smugly: “These specific allegations you’ve made, I think are absolutely bizarre.” The crowd reflexively laughed at Dr. No’s perceived looniness and pundits have already depicted his concerns as “wild” and “odd.” Well, it...
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Tags: American History, Ben Bernanke, Corruption, Federal Reserve, Government subsidies, House Banking Committee, Media, Money and Banking, Richard Bradee, Transparency, Watergate break-in, Watergate burglars, William Proxmire, Wright Patman