SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | Larry Summer made a splash with his closing speech at the IMF Conference. That was probably his intention following him being denied the Fed Chair. Several people have taken turns both critiquing and asserting his “secular stagnation” thesis.
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | The Fed minutes came out. The stock market didn’t appreciate it, at least immediately. Bernanke’s concept of “open and transparent” monetary policy is really something!
By Benjamin Cole at Marcus Nunes’ Historinhas | Recently Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Plosser opined that even periods of mild deflation could be welcome in the United States, and that Fed should have but a lone goal, and ideally that is zero inflation.
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | It is encouraging that Obama may soon have to fill up to 5 slots in the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Maybe it´s expecting too much that he´ll think that´s a very important thing to happen at times like the present. He´s already ‘failed’ in a previous instance when he had 3 slots to fill, leaving them open for a long time and even failing to get an appointee approved! The low quality of some recent Fed Governors is glaring.
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | Professor of Economics James Hamilton reviews new research on “Summarizing monetary policy.” He talks about the existence of a “shadow” short-term interest rate in the U.S. economy that might in some circumstances be quite negative.
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | For less bounce! The Philly Fed has called the measure of GDP obtained from “crushing” the usual measure of GDP (expenditure based) and the income-based measure GDI GDP plus…
SAO PAULO| By Marcus Nunes | In response to Gavyn Davies, who thinks the Eurozone is a whole different galaxy: I have my doubts that “most central banks would take these symptoms as proof that monetary policy should be eased”. Most of them have behaved very badly (excepting the BoJ). Maybe in the dire conditions faced by the Eurozone they would act. This just shows how ‘unplugged’ the blokes at the ECB are!
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | When Bernanke took the Fed´s helm the gap had been closed. What happened going forward, in particular the complete loss of nominal stability in 2008, which made the financial crisis immensely more severe, is the doing of the Bernanke Fed.
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | Friday evening Christina Romer gave the Sumerlin Lecture at Johns Hopkins University. The lecture was called “Monetary Policy in the Post-Crisis World: Lessons Learned and Strategies for the Future.” She touches on many bases, some suspect, like when she says “Financial stability is job number one of any central bank. Without that-nothing else matters”. Saying “Nominal stability” would have been closer to the thruth.