The loss of jobs is only half of the result of the government interventionist equation. The other casualty of an economy driven by taxation, regulation, litigation, subsidization, monetary intervention, and debt is the crippling cost of living for all Americans. [Yes, I was about to say middle class, but we would be wise to eradicate that sort of socialist innuendo from our vernacular.] Earlier today, the | Read More »
If you were watching capital markets closely yesterday, you saw a phenomenon that has rarely been seen before. I certainly never have. And it was linked to the Federal Reserve’s policy statement, released about 2:15pm Eastern time. This was an extraordinary statement, containing several rarely-seen features. The first one, of course, was the commitment by the Fed to keep policy interest rates at or near | Read More »
Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Pejman Yousefzadeh and Elizabeth Blackney discuss the exit of Austan Goolsbee from Obama’s economic team and the need for a QE3. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. | Read More »
Just when you thought US Treasury debt couldn’t get more overpriced, it gets… more overpriced. The 10-year yield fell all the way to 2.95% yesterday. It held that level for part of this morning, and now is just under 3%. At least some of this has to be due to the supply disruption caused by the US hitting its debt ceiling. (Existing debt can be | Read More »
The Democrats have a penchant for advancing their big government dreams through the insidious use of unelected members of government. To that end, Obama has nominated radical ideologues to judgeships and executive agencies since the beginning of his presidency. Another unelected body of the federal government that is rapidly becoming a fourth branch is the Federal Reserve. Due to the vitality of their creeping economic interventions, | Read More »
Recent economic reports of Obamanomics have shown dismal GDP growth, rising jobless claims, an anemic dollar, and soaring inflation; all indications of stagflation. There are two components to stagflation; high unemployment and high inflation. The unemployment, along with the weak economic growth, is due in large part to Obama’s Keynesian fiscal policy of overtaxing, overspending, over-subsidizing, and over-regulating. While the profligate spending and corporate welfare | Read More »
Dave Leonhardt has a piece in today’s New York Times (“Holding Bernanke Accountable,” no link due to paywall). I’m sad about this piece because Leonhardt is a very knowledgeable guy whom I always enjoy reading. But I find that he has a tendency to fall back on conventional wisdom. At times I feel that his research is limited to what he reads in his own | Read More »
Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Francis Cianfrocca and Pejman Yousefzadeh to discuss Paul Ryan‘s budget proposal, plus Francis explains why the Fed loaned billions to foreign banks. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at | Read More »
Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Libya, Washington’s boom town status and a key court decision against the Fed. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy | Read More »
Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Francis Cianfrocca are joined by Dan Mitchell to discuss the Federal reserve, free banking, monetary policy and more. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the | Read More »
Wholesale Food Prices Highest since 74′ Food Stamps Surge in West These two headlines are quintessential examples of the perennial cycle of government intervention. They offer a vivid portrayal of how the Democrats perfidiously inflate the price of food so that the maximum number of people will be dependent upon their food programs, thus granting them a permanent electoral constituency. Obama and the Democrat economists | Read More »
Senator Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) amendment to the Financial Overhaul Bill is set to go into effect in April that will allow Obama and the Federal Reserve to set the prices of debit card interchange fees. That may sound like a boring topic, but consider this: because of Dick Durbin’s amendment, banks are about to restrict the number of and amount of daily debit card purchases | Read More »
Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed So, how was your Christmas vacation? Coffee and Markets is back from our holiday offseason to talk about what 2011 will bring, the rise of China, the challenge of microfinance, and Thomas Sowell’s take on Federal Reserve policy. We’re brought to you as always by Stephen Clouse and Associates. You can find our iTunes feed at CoffeeandMarkets.com. If | Read More »
Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed In today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Tim Geithner’s trip to the G-20 Summit, and Sarah Palin’s battle with the Federal Reserve. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. You can find our iTunes feed at CoffeeandMarkets.com. If you’d like | Read More »
I’ve been asked to give some basic perspective on what the Fed’s “quantitative easing” actually is. Since writing this piece, I’ve become more convinced that I was on the right track. So far, three different QE models have been observed in the wild: the Japanese (2001-06), the British (2008-09), and Bernanke I (2008-10). We’re about to see Bernanke II. All of them are forms of | Read More »
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