The JPMorgan $2-billion-trading-loss story is nearly a week old, and the news has predictably gone through the various spin cycles of the political right and left. Initially, progressives pounced on the loss as reason to strengthen the yet-to-be-fully-implemented Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Conservatives then pushed back on that conclusion arguing that the loss was not [...]
Federal Reserve
Two years ago, in April of 2010, President Obama nominated economist Peter Diamond to the board of the Federal Reserve. Four months later, after Republicans in the Senate blocked his appointment, Obama nominated him again. After almost a full year of waiting, Diamond gave up and withdrew his name from consideration last summer. Republicans’ complaint: [...]
Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve have been taking some big leaps in recent months: policy prescriptions tied to explicit dates, dire warnings to Congress, open press conferences, college lectures and even a Twitter feed. So while it’s still natural to expect characteristic caution from the Fed chairman, it’s not impossible to imagine him breaking [...]
There’s “a massive fiscal cliff” in our future, Ben Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday. To anyone accustomed to breathless congressional debate, this metaphorical escarpment must sound familiar. Someone once tried to push Granny off it. The nation has teetered on its edge countless times, one pork-laden bill away from taking the [...]
The Wall Street Journal has a thoroughly reported story today on the rise in regulatory secrecy at the Federal Reserve. On 45 of 47 of the draft or final regulatory measures voted on by members since the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill in July 2010, the Fed’s five voting members have e-mailed their [...]
Ben Bernanke is playing chicken with the real economy. By most measures the economy in the past few months seems to be improving. The unemployment rate has been falling. Manufacturing appears to be perking up. U.S. car companies are back in business. And home sales even rose in December. Yet, on Wednesday, the U.S. central [...]
Way back in April 2010, Obama nominated three economists to fill out empty seats on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors. Two sailed through, but one, Peter Diamond, was snared in the net of the Senate, where Republican Richard Shelby was unconvinced of the Nobel-winner’s monetary bona fides. After a long back-and-forth, Diamond withdrew in [...]
Last week I drew attention to a Bloomberg analysis of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that said that if you “add up guarantees and lending limits… the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion” to rescuing the financial system during the credit crisis in 2008. It turns out Bloomberg and I were both unjustifiably gigging the Paulites’ collective dander, or at least that’s what the bunker-busting Bernanke says.
Last week I noted the spike in ECB drafts on the Fed’s swap lines, which were reopened in May 2010 to help keep dollar liquidity flowing as Europe entered its sovereign debt crisis. This morning the major central banks, including the Fed, ECB, and the Banks of Japan, England, Switzerland and Canada, announced that as [...]
Bloomberg has a well-researched story out today based on a massive Freedom of Information Act inspection of the Fed’s lending during the financial crisis from August 2007 through April 2010. The headline-making numbers: In sum, the Fed gave the banks more than $7.7 trillion in loans, and banks may have made $13 billion in part [...]
