Category: Central Banks
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
The Fraud in Fractional Reserve Banking / Politics / Central Banks
By: Frank_Hollenbeck
Suppose you bring a fur coat to a dry cleaner, and discover that the owner allowed his wife to wear it before cleaning it (which is also the subject of an episode from Seinfeld). Or, suppose you gave your car keys to a hotel valet and, when attempting to pick up the car later, were told your automobile was lent to teenagers who took it for a joy ride while you slept at the hotel. You would not be too happy, and for good reason. When you surrendered your clothes or your car keys it was a bailment. You retained ownership and gave the clothes or car keys for safekeeping. In no shape or form, did you surrender ownership of the items or lend out your property.
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Central Bankers, Fear and Other Bad Counselors / Politics / Central Banks
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The original idea behind a central bank is that medium and longer term monetary policy should not be allowed to be held hostage by a short-term prevailing political wind, that an incumbent politician and his/her party should not be permitted and/or enabled to manipulate a nation’s currency for political gain. A central bank was (and still is officially) supposed to be independent of politics, to be a buffer between a society’s long term interests and a politician’s short-term ones.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Central Banks are Not Innocent Bystanders / Politics / Central Banks
By: MISES
Peter St. Onge writes: In a recent paper cited last month in The Economist, a trio of economists ran a kitchen sink’s worth of correlations on investment numbers. Kothari et al. concluded that profit growth and stock price boost investment, but that interest rates have a negative effect. This claim runs counter to Austrian business cycle theory, so let’s have a look.
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Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Alan Greenspan Confesses / Politics / Central Banks
By: Investment_U
A Note From the Editorial Director: Alex Green's column yesterday struck a nerve. He decried "hard money types" as wrong in five different ways... and the comments at InvestmentU.com haven't stopped. Dr. Mark Skousen is our favorite hard money type - and, as chance would have it, he just returned from private meetings with none other than Alan Greenspan. Below is Mark's detailed account. - Andrew Snyder
"The Federal Reserve is not independent. I never said it was." - Alan Greenspan
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Wednesday, November 05, 2014
Japan Rhyme and Reason / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: John_Mauldin
“The significant problems that we have created cannot be solved at the level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
– Albert Einstein
“Generals are notorious for their tendency to ‘fight the last war’ – by using the strategies and tactics of the past to achieve victory in the present. Indeed, we all do this to some extent. Life's lessons are hard won, and we like to apply them – even when they don't apply. Sadly enough, fighting the last war is often a losing proposition. Conditions change. Objectives change. Strategies change. And you must change. If you don't, you lose.”
– Dr. G. Terry Madonna and Dr. Michael Young
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
When Will Central Bank Morons Ever Learn? asks Albert Edwards at Societe General / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Mike_Shedlock
Central Banks and the Business Cycle
I like it when someone besides a few financial bloggers takes the gloves off and starts asking some hard-hitting questions.
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Monday, October 20, 2014
Do We Need a Lender of Last Resort? / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: MISES
Nicolás Cachanosky writes: Scotland’s vote for independence resulted in a negative. There won’t be, for now, further discussions about what Scotland should do with its monetary institutions. Still, there is one more issue that I would like to discuss, because it transcends the particular case of Scotland, had independence been the result of the vote.
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Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Comparing One Dimension of the Policy Responses of the ECB and the Federal Reserve / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Jesse
Here is a chart comparing the Balance Sheet Assets of the Fed and the European Central Bank.
It is important to recall that the Fed has been providing extensive funding to non-US, largely European, multinational Banks through their US subsidiaries.
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Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Central Bank Balance Bullying: Investor Implications / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Axel_Merk
"Bullying" by the Fed, ECB, Bank of England and Bank of Japan has been in place for up to six years, forcing not-so-mighty central banks, savers and investors to deal with the consequences. Understanding the dynamics may help investors to navigate what's ahead.
First, let's get one thing straight: it matters little what you; we; or anyone in the blogosphere thinks policy makers should do. We are bystanders that have to deal with the consequences of their actions. The cheapest action undertaken by policy makers is to coerce the markets with verbiage. Their words matter, as they control the printing presses. Having said this, if the words are not followed by action, at some point, the markets may call their bluff.
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Thursday, August 28, 2014
The Monetary Killing Fields / Politics / Central Banks
By: Fred_Sheehan
The house organ for the Council of Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, has published its final solution under the title: "Print Less and Transfer More: Why Central Banks Should Give Money directly to the People." Written under the names Mark Blyth and Eric Lonergan, but trumpeting the establishment voice of, say, Martin Wolf, they state: "It's well past time, then, for U.S. policymakers - as well as their counterparts in other developed countries - to consider a version of Friedman's helicopter drops.... Many in the private sector don't want to take out any more loans; they believe their debt levels are already too high. That's especially bad news for central bankers: when households and businesses refuse to rapidly increase their borrowing, monetary policy can't do much to increase their spending.... Governments must do better. Rather than trying to spur private-sector spending through asset purchases or interest-rate changes, central banks, such as the Fed, should hand consumers cash directly.... The transfers wouldn't cause damaging inflation, and few doubt that they would work. The only real question is why no government has tried them."
Friday, July 18, 2014
Central Bank Monetary Discord / Politics / Central Banks
By: Alasdair_Macleod
Last Monday's Daily Telegraph carried an interview with Jaime Caruana, the General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements (the BIS). As General Manger, Caruana is CEO of the central banks' central bank. In international monetary affairs the heads of all central banks, with the possible exception of Janet Yellen at the Fed, defer to him. And if any one central bank feels the need to obtain the support of all the others, Caruana is the link-man.
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Thursday, July 10, 2014
Central Bank Smackdown / Politics / Central Banks
By: John_Mauldin
Smackdown: smack·down, ˈsmakˌdoun/, noun, US informal
1. a bitter contest or confrontation.
"the age-old man versus Nature smackdown"
2. a decisive or humiliating defeat or setback.
The term “smackdown” was first used by professional wrestler Dwayne Johnson (AKA The Rock) in 1997. Ten years later its use had become so ubiquitous that Merriam-Webster felt compelled to add it to their lexicon. It may be Dwayne Johnson’s enduring contribution to Western civilization, notwithstanding and apart from his roles in The Fast and The Furious movie series. All that said, it is quite the useful word for talking about confrontations that are more for show than actual physical altercations.
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Monday, June 23, 2014
Out-of-control Central Banks are Buying Up the Planet / Politics / Central Banks
By: Ellen_Brown
In China and elsewhere, central banks are turning from monetary policy to asset grabs.
Finance is the new form of warfare – without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts. It is a competition in credit creation to buy foreign resources, real estate, public and privatized infrastructure, bonds and corporate stock ownership. Who needs an army when you can obtain the usual objective (monetary wealth and asset appropriation) simply by financial means? — Dr. Michael Hudson, Counterpunch, October 2010
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Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Central Banker Right Think – The Imams Fight Back / Politics / Central Banks
By: Andrew_McKillop
Not Credible
The central banker fraternity has its own ideological Right Think, like the mob of Tea Towel Heads presently near Baghdad, but the UK glove puppet media has singled out Britain's central bank chief Mark Carney as “unreliable and out of line”. He supposedly infringed central banker right think but what he did wrong is as arcane as Sunni and Shia imams hairsplitting the doctrines of ibn Hanbal and al-Askari. In any case don't be mistaken. Carney is a fully paid-up member of the bankster fraternity. Attacking him is like attacking all the rest.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Why Negative Interest Rates Are Only the First Step / Interest-Rates / Central Banks
By: Casey_Research
By Jeff Thomas, International Man
In 1946, an American singer, Merle Travis, recorded a song called "Sixteen Tons." The song told the story of a poor coal miner in Kentucky, who lived in a small coal mining town. The town's economy revolved entirely around the mine.
The mining company owned a "company store," which had a monopoly on the sale of provisions. It charged rates that were designed to use up the weekly paycheque of the miner, so that the miner, in effect, was a slave to the mining company. As the song states,
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Monday, June 16, 2014
Central Banks Have Become The Markets / Politics / Central Banks
By: Raul_I_Meijer
The cluster, – or pride, or cabal – of global central banks, led by the Bank of Japan have come very close to strangling their respective bond markets to the point suffocation with ultra low interest rates, and therefore together moved $29 trillion they had ‘invested’ there into equity markets. Restoring the world’s $100 trillion bond markets to health, even ever, will be a task so daunting that it’s hard to see one single way it can be done. The Bank of Japan has become the de facto only buyer of its own government’s bonds, with the result that trading has ground to a halt, literally so for a number of days last week. Yields on global bonds have been manipulated down so much that not only pension funds and other traditional large-scale fixed-income buyers feel forced to move into stocks, it’s even come to the point where central banks themselves, too, make that move.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
What To Expect From June's Major Economic & Central Bank Events / Economics / Central Banks
By: EconMatters
Since the last Employment report things have been relatively quiet on the economic and Central Bank front but all that is set to change over the next three weeks. Volatility should pick up and many of these events could be potentially market moving for certain asset classes.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2014
How Central Banks Are Waging War on Your Savings / Politics / Central Banks
By: Mark_Thornton
Martin Wolf is the chief economics commentator at the influential Financial Times. He has received numerous honorary awards, positions, and degrees. My first knowledge of him came from a friend who had attended a lecture where Mr. Wolf mentioned that the best research on real estate economics was being done in Auburn, Alabama. I was quite shocked that Mr. Wolf was following our work here at the Mises Institute.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Every Central Bank for Itself / Politics / Central Banks
By: John_Mauldin
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” – Mike Tyson
For the last 25 days I’ve been traveling in Argentina and South Africa, two countries whose economies can only be described as fragile, though for very different reasons. Emerging-market countries face a significantly different set of challenges than the developed world does. These challenges are compounded by the rather indifferent policies of developed-world central banks, which are (even if somewhat understandably) entirely self-centered. Argentina has brought its problems upon itself, but South Africa can somewhat justifiably express frustration at the developed world, which, as one emerging-market central bank leader suggests, is engaged in a covert currency war, one where the casualties are the result of unintended consequences. But the effects are nonetheless real if you’re an emerging-market country.
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Friday, February 07, 2014
How Central Banks Cause Income Inequality / Politics / Central Banks
By: Frank_Hollenbeck
The gap between the rich and poor continues to grow. The wealthiest 1 percent held 8 percent of the economic pie in 1975 but now hold over 20 percent. This is a striking change from the 1950s and 1960s when their share of all incomes was slightly over 10 percent. A study by Emmanuel Saez found that between 2009 and 2012 the real incomes of the top 1 percent jumped 31.4 percent. The richest 10 percent now receive 50.5 percent of all incomes, the largest share since data was first recorded in 1917. The wealthiest are becoming disproportionally wealthier at an ever increasing rate.