Last week the FOMC announced that it would continue unchanged its policies of open-ended quantitative easing to the tune of $85 billion per month and targeting a zero interest rate for as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5 percent and (CPI) inflation does not exceed 2.5 percent.

The Economist has a new report out on the Nordic countries naming them the model for how other nations can return their economies to prosperity.

I. Introduction

Nearly a decade ago, poker exploded in popularity. Between television programming, media coverage, and pop culture references to it — in particular, the Texas Hold ‘Em variant — the game became virtually unavoidable.

Ken Rogoff is not too impressed with the Fed’s critics. Restricting the Fed’s activities, or “worse” — I guess he means scrapping the Fed altogether — is “nonsense,” and “to single out Fed governors for missing the coming catastrophe is ludicrous.” He concedes that the Fed made some egregious mistakes leading up to the financial crisis (he doesn’t see credit expansion per se as playing any role), but argues that no one else saw it coming either.

In today’s column on “Money, Wealth, and Models,” Paul Krugman lashes out “the Austrianish horde” for being critical of his view “that you can create real wealth by printing more pieces of paper.” He is addressing Hans Hoppe’s critique of Krugman that as a society you cannot turn pieces of paper into wealth, but not by name.

The standard interpretation of the Panic of 1837 and subsequent recession blamed state bank monetary inflation abetted by President Jackson’s removal of the federal deposits from the Bank of the United States. This interpretation was rooted in sound economic analysis by contemporary Jeffersonian and hard-money critics of Jackson such as Nathan Appleton (the Massachusetts’ conservative textile manufacturer and banker), Albert Gallatin (Jefferson’s treasury secretary and now a New York banker) and Condy Raguet (the Philadelphia political economist and free-trade leader).

I was a guest on Power Trading Radio with John O’Donnell yesterday. HT to Mark Thornton. O’Donnell gives a nice plug to the Mises Institute at the end of the interview.

FDR famously said that government debt doesn’t matter, because “we owe it to ourselves.” In that case, Butler Shaffer helpfully asks, what’s the harm in default? We’re simply repudiating our obligations to ourselves.

Of course, default isn’t so bad even from a purely economic point of view.