Dubai retailer MAF eyes at least $500 million from hybrid bond http://t.co/Mq65R8Yf52
18 minutes ago
United States Channel: Latest Posts
-
United States
A Subtle View of Labor Market Improvement
In a speech delivered Tuesday to the Japan Society in New York City, Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley offered his view on how he might assess the appropriate pace of the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) current $85 billion per month asset purchase program: Let me give a few examples of how my [...]
-
United States
Why Democrats Can’t be Trusted to Control Wall Street
Who needs Republicans when Wall Street has the Democrats? With the help of congressional Democrats, the Street is rolling back financial reforms enacted after its near meltdown. According to the New York Times, a bill that’s already moved through the House Financial Services Committee, allowing more of the very kind of derivatives trading (bets on bets) [...]
-
United States
And Then There is Bernanke
Lots of Fed chatter in the last week. For openers, some background from Reuters: It decided on May 1 to keep buying at an $85 billion monthly pace, and many economists say mixed economic data warrants keeping up the purchases through year-end. But persistent warnings from more hawkish Fed officials had fanned talk that it might [...]
-
Ed Dolan's Econ Blog
Corporate Taxes: Don’t Beat Up on Apple: The Flaw is in the Law
This week it was the turn of Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook to sit in the Congressional hot seat. With lights blazing and cameras rolling, a bipartisan lineup of Senators grilled him about the relatively small amount of tax the company pays on its substantial corporate profits. According to a New York Times account of [...]
-
United States
Are There Reasonable Approaches to Fiscal Consolidation?
According to the CBO, under the President’s budget, the deficit hovers around 2% of GDP, and debt-to-GDP stabilizes through 2023 at levels lower than today’s. Hence, were the President’s budget to be implemented, the budget would be on a path to medium run stabilization. This point is illustrated in Figures 1 and 2 from the CBO [...]
-
United States
Narayana Kocherlakota on Safe Assets and the Natural Interest Rate
Narayana Kocherlakota, President of the Minneapolis Fed, recently participated in a panel where he discussed the key challenges facing central banks. He viewed the safe asset shortage and the related inability of the Fed to push the actual market rate down to its natural interest rate level as problem number one. Readers of this blog know I [...]
-
United States
Are You Ready for Some Fedspeak?
Ready or not, we should expect a week dominated by an even greater focus on Fed policy. There are four reasons: The economic data calendar is very light; Earnings season has ended; Many will be heading for the exits early, anticipating a holiday weekend; and finally Bernanke testifies on the economy before the Congressional Joint [...]
-
Ed Dolan's Econ Blog
People are Drawing the Wrong Lesson from the IRS 501(c)(4) Scandal: We Need to Rethink the Whole Concept of Tax-Exempt Organizations
President Obama is shocked and angered that the IRS targeted certain conservative organizations for special scrutiny when they applied for 501(c)(4) tax exemptions as “social welfare” organizations. Republicans are just as shocked. The whole Washington political establishment is shocked, just shocked, that anyone, let alone the IRS, would try to stem the flow of political [...]
-
United States
Pyromaniacs on the Potomac: The Problem With Obama’s Second Term
Six months into a second term and the Obama White House is on the defensive and floundering: Benghazi, the IRS’s investigations of right-wing groups, the Justice Department’s snooping into journalists’ phone records, Obamacare behind schedule, the Administration’s push for gun control ending in failure. Should the blame fall mainly on congressional Republicans and their allies [...]
-
Ed Dolan's Econ Blog
US CPI Falls in April at Fastest Rate since 2008. Even so, could it be Overstating the True Rate of Inflation?
According to data released yesterday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Consumer Price Index fell in April at an annual rate of -4.35 percent. It was the second consecutive monthly decrease and the fastest rate of decrease since late 2008, when the economy was in free fall. The April decrease was largely attributable [...]
