Switzerland’s central bank, the Swiss National Bank (SNB), lost $3.6 billion in 2023, after a gigantic loss of $150 billion in 2022. But after booking these losses, and properly subtracting them from its capital, the SNB still had positive capital of over $70 billion. This gives it the quite respectable capital to total assets ratio of 7.9%. All
Published in The Wall Street Journal : Mr. Levy describes the Fed’s permanent problem: It doesn’t and can’t know what the natural rate of interest is. Everyone should pity the members of the Federal Open Market Committee, who must inwardly confess that they can’t know the answers, yet have to play their parts in the Fed melodrama nonetheless. Alex
In The Price of Time , Edward Chancellor has given us a colorful and provocative review of the history, theory, and the profound effects of interest rates, the price that links the present and the future, which he argues is “the most important price of all.” The history runs from Hammurabi’s Code which in 1750 BC was “largely concerned with the
Although manipulating housing finance is not among the Federal Reserve’s statutory objectives, the U.S. central bank has long been an essential factor in the behavior of mortgage markets, for better or worse, often for worse. In 1969, for example, the Fed created a severe credit crunch in housing finance by its interest rate policy. Its higher
Hold up your hand if you think that the aggregate losses of an organization are an asset of that organization. No hands at all? Absolutely right. Losses are not an asset. That’s accounting 101. Yet the greatest central bank in the world, the Federal Reserve, insists on claiming that its continuing losses, which have accumulated to the staggering
This article is adapted from a lecture delivered to the Federalist Society: The Federal Reserve is a fundamental problem for the Constitutional order of the American Republic. How can it be that it considered itself able to unilaterally impose permanent inflation on the country, without legislative debate or approval? The shifting theories
[ This article was first published in the New York Sun . ] “Who will guard these guardians?” That poser of Juvenal, satirist of Rome, is an immortal question — nowhere more pertinent, though, than in deciding who should oversee the Federal Reserve. In the Fed, we have supposed guardians of stable prices who have decided by themselves to create
Published in The New York Sun : Central bankers whistle ‘Dixie’ as mark-to-market losses dramatically shrink the banking system’s economic capital. Whistling a happy tune, the Federal Reserve vice chairman for supervision, Michael Barr, recently testified to Congress that “overall, the banking system remains sound and resilient.” A more candid
This article was originally published by the Federalist Society. The relevant text of the Dodd-Frank Act is clear: “Each year (or quarter of such year) . . . the Board of Governors shall transfer to the [Consumer Financial Protection] Bureau from the combined earnings of the Federal Reserve System, the amount determined by the Director to be
Originally published by Law&Liberty. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been a source of controversy since its creation. Critics of the agency have long argued that its independent status is unconstitutional. In a recent decision , however, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the CFPB’s funding scheme, even
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.