The Fed

The Fed and the government have gone to great lengths to prop up home prices. But it seems a bit odd to try to increase the cost of a basic necessity like housing. Why not do the same with food and clothing?

James Grant discusses his new book, The Forgotten Depression.

Everyone knows about the Great Depression which brought massive government intervention and lasted a decade. But few know of the Depression of 1920–21 which was ignored by government and lasted eighteen months.

The F.A. Hayek Lecture, sponsored by Dr. Rafael Perez-Mera.

In recent decades, the tech sector has brought us newer and better goods and ever-dropping prices.

Recently the Federal Reserve reached its one hundred year anniversary. This milestone provided a nice occasion for economists to analyze the Fed’s performance in the past century.

Measuring aggregate prices through a consumer price index is inherently arbitrary because someone decides what to measure and how. There are better ways to do it, but "fixing" the measure will do nothing to fix the ills of the Fed's monetary policy.

Thanks to the central bank, those who worked hard and “played by the rules” all their lives now face an uncertain future as inflation c

In recent decades, the tech sector has brought us newer and better goods and ever-dropping prices. In an unhampered market, the same would happen across the entire economy. But, the Fed won't allow this to happen.

In this lecture from last week's Sound Money seminar at the Mises Institute, Jonathan Newman explains the basics of how the central bank's distortion of interest rates and the money supply brings booms and busts.