A: No, Not directly, but Yes Indirectly. Channeling the FOMC I remember once when the head of the trading desk at the New York Fed was giving his report on international operations, the FOMC broke into applause when he announced that there had been no dollar intervention during the past year. While fixed exchange [...]
(The FOMC Should Start Making that Distinction) Monetary policy is not interest-rate policy. Neither is it Fed balance-sheet policy. Monetary policy is money-supply policy. Sometimes these distinctions aren't important, but they are important now, and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) should begin educating the public on them because soon it may need to [...]
I sat in on a presentation this week where a picture of the Fed's balance sheet growth was shown as prima facie evidence that inflation looms down the road. The presenter wasn't sure when inflation would arrive, but it would arrive and be caused by the balance sheet expansion. No chain of causality was laid [...]
If the money supply increases 10 percent in 3 months, we call it a 40 percent annualized increase. If it flattens at three months and is at the same level 3 months after that, it becomes a 20 percent annual rate for the 6 months. Six months later, if money growth remains flat, it becomes [...]
People keep talking and writing about the explosion of the money supply and the coming inflationary tsunami. Let me point out once again that the M1 and M2 measures of the money supply spiked but have since come back down. There is no explosion of the money supply. I The monetary base (currency outstanding plus [...]