The Fed Gooses the Capital Markets

By: Francis Cianfrocca (Diary)  |  August 10th at 08:34 AM  | 

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 »

What Bernanke Should Say About Unemployment: David Leonhardt Gets It Wrong

By: Francis Cianfrocca (Diary)  |  April 27th at 10:10 AM  | 

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 »