Craig Eyermann | Tuesday September 21, 2021 at 5:00 PM PDT
The Federal Reserve is trying very hard to get ahead of a potential conflict-of-interest scandal. Several high-ranking Fed officials have investments in securities the U.S. central bank has been buying to stimulate the economy. Consequently, these officials have conflicts of interest in considering policies that might materially affect the value of their investments. Reuters...
Read More »
The Consumer Price Index numbers for inflation showed a lower-than-expected increase in August, but as this article notes, we still have a lot of inflation. I’m drawing my information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the government’s official measure of prices. The good news is that prices increased by only 0.2% in August, but...
Read More »
Randall G. Holcombe | Tuesday July 27, 2021 at 5:07 PM PDT
Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, has said that the current uptick in inflation is temporary, and he expects inflation to subside in 2022. Despite rising inflation, the Fed is not in an inflation-fighting mood. Powell’s view rests heavily on interruptions in the supply chain that have...
Read More »
Randall G. Holcombe | Monday May 17, 2021 at 1:15 PM PDT
Widely reported in the financial news, inflation skyrocketed in March–the Consumer Price Index was up 0.8% in just one month. Year over year, the inflation rate from March 2020 to March 2021 was 4.2%. Many people have told me they think those figures are understated from their own shopping experience, but I’m taking all...
Read More »
Craig Eyermann | Friday April 30, 2021 at 4:08 PM PDT
Do the U.S. national debt and the government’s budget deficits matter? If you listen to the economists shaping the Biden administration’s policy agenda, they say they do not. Their basic argument is that with interest rates so low, the government can borrow as much as politicians want to spend. They think they never have...
Read More »
Craig Eyermann | Tuesday April 13, 2021 at 6:12 PM PDT
When President Joe Biden was sworn into office on January 20, 2021, the U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding stood at $20,751.9 billion. The chart below shows who Uncle Sam borrowed all that money from on that date:
Craig Eyermann | Wednesday March 10, 2021 at 6:15 PM PST
The Congressional Budget Office has issued its 2021 Long-Term Budget Outlook months ahead of its usual schedule. The CBO forecasts that the publicly held portion of the national debt will grow to more than double the size of the U.S. economy during the next 30 years.
K. Lloyd Billingsley | Sunday August 16, 2020 at 11:50 AM PDT
“The next six months could make what we have experienced so far seem like just a warm-up to a greater catastrophe. With many schools and colleges starting, stores and businesses reopening, and the beginning of the indoor heating season, new case numbers will grow quickly.” That sounds like the latest pronouncement from Dr. Anthony...
Read More »
Craig Eyermann | Monday July 27, 2020 at 10:07 AM PDT
The Trump administration has often trumpeted its effectiveness in reducing the number of regulations that U.S. government agencies impose on regular Americans and businesses. But since the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of new regulatory restrictions issued by federal agencies and departments has exploded, reversing much of the progress the Trump administration...
Read More »
Randall G. Holcombe | Thursday May 28, 2020 at 7:30 AM PDT
The arrival of COVID-19 has brought with it an unprecedented and uncertain situation in many ways. One uncertainty is that because the disease is novel, we don’t know its future trajectory. Another uncertainty is how rapidly governments will move to lift restrictions on economic activity. That is something government officials can choose. Yet another...
Read More »
