I salute President Biden's nominations for the Federal Reserve Board, especially Sarah Bloom Raskin and Lisa Cook. (Philip Jefferson seems straightforward and uncontroversial, but other than reading a CV I haven't looked …

This is part of an ongoing series of essays on inflation.  This one is at Project Syndicate . The next post is somewhat longer and more academic with the same themes.  The Ghost of Christmas Inflation Inflation continues to surg…

A Project Syndicate Essay. Before it moves on to climate change, inequality, and racial issues, the Fed should have to think just a little bit about the evident failure of its existing financial regulation.  Why Isn't the Fe…

Fed Pick Raskin Tries to Mollify GOP Critics on Climate Stance is the Bloomberg.com headline.  I previously praised Raskin for the clarity of her statements. Unlike most others in this game, she straightforwardly advocated th…

Congress passed a much-ballyhooed "infrastructure" bill. "Roads and bridges." Well, not much of it went to roads and bridges in the first place, only $110 billion out of $1.2 Trillion went to roads, bridges &…

Why do so many Americans believe crazy things? Maybe not "crazy," but beliefs that wildly get wrong factual costs and benefits, such as those of vaccines?  It does not help that they have been lied to, over and over aga…

We need to be reminded occasionally that nothing matters but long-run growth, and long-run growth all comes from productivity, better knowledge of how to better serve human needs and desires.  Yet economic policy is almost all no…

(Coauthored with Elizabeth Fama) Why are we — the U.S., NATO, the civilized western world — not fighting for Ukraine? If we do not fight in Ukraine now, we will fight there later, or in the Baltics, Poland, or Taiwan, at much gre…

This weekend's WSJ essay " How the Fed Averted Economic Disaster "  by Nick Timiraos finally brings into public discussion the second question we should all be asking of the Fed. What happened in the grandest bailou…

Just as I hit publish on my last post , the Wall Street Journal publishes a much better essay  by Ted Nordhaus on the impossibility of building infrastructure in the US, even if it is green alternative energy climate-change infr…

The US, and New York State in particular, are embarked on a decarbonization agenda. Canada has a lot of hydropower to spare, which emits no CO2. (Though large hydropower is rather hilariously not deemed "renewable" by C…

What rights do we need to guarantee our political freedom. Well, the right to speak freely, of course. The right peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Even in trucks.  But without econ…

Updates and rumination on my last few posts, why has the Fed responded so slowly to inflation. ( Last post )  1. Forward guidance?  For the last several years, the Fed has placed more and more weight on "forward guidance.&qu…