Finance Basic To Advance Level Knowledge

This week on the podcast I had a great time talking the monetary disequilibrium view of business cycles with Steve Horwitz. This perspective sees the deviation between desired and actual money holdings as the cause of business cycles.  Since money is the one asset on every market, all one needs to do is disrupt monetary equilibrium and you have disrupted every other market. This is not true for any other asset. The monetary disequilibrium view, in short, takes money seriously. This understanding is different than the dominant view today that sees business cycles being the result of deviations between the expected paths of the natural and actual real interest rate. After the show I asked Steve if there was mapping between these these two views and he said yes. The views should be complementary. Nonetheless, the monetary disequilibrium view rarely get a hearing so I was really glad to do this interview with Steve.  I have also posted below a presentation I used to ...

The FOMC decided today to raise its target interest rate so that it now sits in the 1.00-1.25 percent range. This move was largely expected and the FOMC continues to signal via its economic projections that it wants one more interest rate hike this year. Nothing terribly new here, but there were several developments today that caught my attention and are worth considering. First, the FOMC released a surprisingly detailed plan of how it will unwind its balance sheet later this year. Fed chair Janet Yellen also said during the press conference these plans could be "put in effect relatively soon" if the data come in as expected. The announcement today can be seen as part of the FOMC's ongoing efforts to get the markets ready for the shrinking of its balance sheet.  To shed light on this development, recall that the main theory the Fed used to justify the the large scale asset purchases was the portfolio channel . It says the Fed's purchase of safe assets woul...