Nouriel Roubini, writing in the New York Daily News , said on Sunday that “unemployed Americans should hunker down for more job losses” given the likelihood of a job less recovery. This was as gloomy a piece as I have seen from Roubini in the past few months. He has clearly become more downbeat about [...]

A friend sent me the following presentation earlier in the week when I was feeling a bit ill. So I neglected to post it.  But, I want to return to it because it is in keeping with my recovery/depression theme. These are the issues that were complicit in the latest financial crisis and almost none [...]

Marshall Auerback here with a few thoughts on money, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, and the alphabet soup of emergency liquidity facilities.
The expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet has been widely misunderstood within the economics profession, because it has been viewed through the lens of a pre-existing debate about the monetary transmission mechanism. Those who [...]

I just came across a post on Zero Hedge called “An Overview Of The Fed’s Intervention In Equity Markets Via The Primary Dealer Credit Facility.” Now, that’s a mouthful. As far as I can discern, the post’s purpose is to expose alleged equities market manipulation by the Federal Reserve. However, I found the argument rather [...]

Morgan Stanley has an interesting piece out this morning called Debtflation. In the past, they have raised alarm bells over what they see as embedded inflation in the loose monetary policy presently being followed by most central banks.  This particular piece focuses not on a general potential for inflation, but the possibility that central banks [...]

In January, Ben Bernanke gave a very important speech at the London School of Economics where he laid out the Federal Reserve’s strategy in fighting the forces of deflation and market illiquidity (see post with videos here).  His was a strategy that took the Japanese variant of quantitative easing one further – toward what I [...]

On numerous occasions you will have heard me use the term ‘monetizing debt’ to describe what happens when the central bank creates money out of thin air in order to increase reserves in the banking system. The central bank is certainly increasing the monetary base in this regard, but are they really monetizing the debt [...]

In the clearest signal yet that we are still in a potentially devastating global deflationary spiral, The Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank and the world’s oldest central bank, has effectively cut interest rates to minus 0.25% and has started a program of quantitative easing a.k.a printing money. These are the most dramatic moves yet by a [...]

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 [...]

You have to hand it to Marc Faber; he knows how to grab your attention. Earlier this year, I posted a video of him saying “don’t underestimate the power of printing money“, a quote that has become mantra for me.  Basically, he believes a rising tide of quantitative easing is going to buoy stock markets [...]