Monetary Policy

Now that the U.S. economy seems to be turning the corner on the worst inflation in 40 years, it’s important to remember that sound money and sound finances go hand in hand. While the Federal Reserve will continue to focus on reducing demand through restrictive interest rates, Congress should concentrate on expanding supply. Yet it all needs to be accomplished while also pursuing a balanced budget. Read More

Welcome to the era of good-cop, bad-cop tactics from major government institutions. Fiscal and monetary policy are now working at odds to fight inflation. The Fed could crush demand by raising interest rates to stratospheric levels only to have a spendthrift White House and complicit Congress pump up consumer prices through fiscal measures that expand spending power—cash payments, subsidies, rebates, student loan forgiveness. Read More

Taxes haven’t gone up yet, but inflation and lost productivity amount to financial repression. It’s a $4.5 trillion week in Washington. Between the infrastructure and reconciliation bills in various stages of debate, it’s worth discussing in some depth how all this will be paid for. Government spending is conventionally understood as a matter of increased… Read More

The Federal Reserve’s policies of increasing interest rates and quantitative tightening—reducing its $8.9 trillion balance sheet—will increase the volume and cost of federal government borrowing, slamming the federal budget and exposing the consequences of decades of deficit spending.

Total federal gross interest cost over the 12 months ending on May 31 was $666 billion. If we include the impending extra interest on Treasury bills and the maturing notes, that figure rises to $863 billion. This is a staggering cost. National military spending was $746 billion over the past 12 months; Medicare spending was $700 billion.
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John Cochrane interview When debt grows so much that people don’t believe the Treasury will pay it, they sell their bonds and buy other things, sending prices through the roof. Annual inflation in the U.S. rose to 7.5% in January, the highest it’s been since February 1982, when it was 7.6% and declining. This current… Read More

Then as now, what drove higher prices was excess demand owing to runaway government spending. Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker understood.

History withholds its wisdom from those who ignore its lessons. Forty years ago this month, the fiscal policy of President Ronald Reagan and the monetary policy of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker broke the back of the 20th century’s most destructive inflation, ushered in an economic expansion that effectively lasted a quarter of a century, and banished inflation—until now. Read More