In our last update on money supply — using the “Austrian” measure of money supply developed by Murray Rothbard and Joseph Salerno — we found that money supply growth hit a 46-month high of 11.2 percent in October.
Growth has moderated since then, however, with year-over-year growth in US dollars dropping to 10.3 percent in November and 8.8 percent in December.
The Federal Reserve opted to stay the course this week after meeting for the first time since Trump took office. The real question is whether 2017 will be the year they begin to normalize their balance sheet.
“Big Corporation helps government regulators crush poor people.”
This is a headline fit for a series on the current war against making loans to low-income borrowers — although we’ll never see it framed this way by The Washington Post or The New York Times.
In our last update on money supply — using the “Austrian” measure of money supply developed by Murray Rothbard and Joseph Salerno — we found that money supply growth hit a 46-month high of 11.2 percent in October.
Growth has moderated since then, however, with year-over-year growth in US dollars dropping to 10.3 percent in November and 8.8 percent in December.
Democracy in America, Part I
Tocqueville begins his story by discussing the “Exterior Form of North America,” and in particular, the part that would become the United States. By European standard, it was a vast territory, dominated by the great central valley of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. In the east there were dense forests, to the west seemingly endless prairies. When European man came to the lands of the Caribbean and South America, he found Nature to be generous, a constant delight. Middle America, what would become the United States, was a land made for work.
The Introduction to Democracy in America
In the “Author’s Introduction” to the volumes that appeared in 1835, Tocqueville sketches the aim, approach and major themes that will dominate the whole work. Equality of condition was the fact that most impressed him in the United States, he says,
Last month, the US Department of Education admitted that a much larger number of students are defaulting on student loans than previously reported. According to the Wall Street Journal:
[T]he Education Department released a memo saying that it had overstated student loan repayment rates at most colleges and trade schools and provided updated numbers.
Fed policymakers are of the view that the correct interest rate policy could bring the economy onto a path of economic stability and low price inflation. The idea is to guide interest rates toward what is called the “natural” interest rate. The natural rate is believed to be one that is consistent with stable prices and a balanced economy.
What is required then is that Fed policymakers successfully target the federal funds rate toward this natural interest rate.
