Of late, there have been a lot of worries about he potential for inflation in the U.S.  Marc Faber is the most noted pundit in this regard. Over-the-top comments he made back in May about hyperinflation in the U.S. may have been a catalyst for all of the inflation talk. See my post Marc Faber: [...]

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It seems like a long time off, but the Fed is going to eventually have to withdraw all of the excess liquidity it has created when the economy recovers.  However, doing so will prove tricky.  First, we have debt deflationary situation in the United States which could lead to a serious double-dip if a restrictive [...]

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In case you missed it, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was on Capitol Hill this morning making his case in regards to the Bank of America – Merrill Lynch deal.  The Chairman stated in unequivocal terms that he did not pressure anyone.  Rather, he stated that he cautioned Ken Lewis about the prudence of invoking [...]

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Here’s a conspiracy theory for you.  As I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, I ill keep this one pretty simple. Here’s the chain of events.

Back in late September when the world was falling apart, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson were all desperate to keep things from unravelling.  As a result, they [...]

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Just last week, we saw a parade of banks exiting the dreaded TARP program set up last year by the U.S. government and used to temporarily recapitalize the U.S. banking system.  The banks were able to do so in no small measure because of the unrealistically rosy scenarios in the stress tests used to determine [...]

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The drama at Bank of America continues with Ken Lewis testifying before Congress today.  Most of the events surround claims by Lewis that he was coerced into doing the Merrill deal by Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke.   I chronicled these events when they were made public back in April. BofA CEO [...]

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It seems a Q3 recovery is the new consensus of professional economists.  First, we hear Paul Krugman saying this, now Richard Berner and David Greenlaw are singing the same tune.
The deepest post-war recession likely will end by mid-to-late summer, a bit sooner than we’ve been expecting.  The improvement in financial conditions and incoming data has [...]

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I received a high-quality note from Marc Chandler, Chief Currency Strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman, which I think worthy of posting.  He makes several points which are game changers regarding fiscal and monetary policy.  They are: Don Kohn, an influential Fed official, thinks that the Fed has kept long-term interest rates [...]

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Marshall Auerback here with a few thoughts about the monetary policy end game.

Bernanke has to continue to make hawkish comments about inflation so as to avoid a complete blow out in bond yields, but the the dirty little secret is that inflation is the way out of the debt trap, along with [...]

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The ECB went aggressive today and a big way.  They were the last holdout in the move to quantitative easing (a.ka. printing money).  They have lowered rates to a record low 1.00% and issued a statement that the European Central Bank will begin purchasing covered bonds (a.k.a propping up the market artificially).  If you don’t [...]

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