Serious Question
Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam, Macroeconomics, Money on May 7th, 2016
Does anyone actually store money under their mattress?
Category Archive for 'Money'
The Fed Can’t Go Bankrupt
Posted in Central Planning, Money on Apr 6th, 2016
Or so a correspondent tells me. What do we know? The Fed is currently leveraged at over 110:1, or in laymens terms it has a 0.9% capital ratio. Most “banks” would seem to be in dangerous peril of bankruptcy being this highly leveraged (4% to 8% is not only their typical capital cushion, but 4% […]
Questions on the Swiss Referendum on 100% Reserves
Posted in Central Planning, Money on Nov 6th, 2015
Alex Tabarrok points us to news that the Swiss are voting on whether to require (commercial) banks to hold 100% reserves. Now, the vote here is with regard to 100% reserves on deposits, here are a few thoughts/questions one may want to ask as we consider this: Do you think that curtailing the ability of […]
Retail Financial Markets in Nothing
Posted in Competition, Corporatism, Dynamism - Not, Money, Personal Finance, Regulation on Aug 27th, 2015
Reader warning – this is not well thought out, and I am narrating it to my phone via voice as I am driving to work this morning. It occurs to me that either retail financial institutions are intensely sclerotic, old-school, dinosaurs, or that regulation is strangling what they are able to offer retail customers, or […]
Fun Facts to Know and Tell: FED Leverage Ratio Edition
Posted in Central Planning, Financial Institutions, Fun Facts, Macroeconomics, Money on Apr 16th, 2014
If you read the Fed’s consolidated financial statements for fun and take them seriously, you would learn that the Fed’s current leverage ratio is … … … 77:1. It’s just a number of course.
Hiking Inflation and More “E”nvironmentalist Logical Consistency
Posted in Money, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Feb 19th, 2013
Do you think debasement is unique to the monetary authorities? Heck no! For those of you familiar with the various hiking achievements, one of the most famous groups of treks on the East Coast is to complete the Adirondack 46. This is supposed to represent the 46 peaks in the Adirondacks that exceed 4,000 feet […]
Is Burning Man Illegal?
Posted in Entrepreneurs, Money, Voluntary Society on Feb 4th, 2013
Aside from the carbon footprint of thousands of people heading to the Nevada desert and literally “burning the man” there may be something actually illegal about Burning Man. For the uninitiated, Burning Man is a weeklong event that attracts over 40,000 very interesting and eclectic people. You can read lots about it here. As I […]
Goldi-Locks, the Armchair Banking Theorist
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Money, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jan 30th, 2013
For the Goldi-Locks armchair economist, no price is good. Prices are always too high, too low or too stagnant. The same seems to be true of competition. Anti-capitalists are entirely obsessed with the idea that if we allow markets to run wild, corporations will grow larger and larger and larger and exert undue influence over […]
The Money as Ultimate Ends Straw-Man
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Economists, Institutions, Money on Sep 26th, 2012
There is no denying that many people, perhaps yours truly included, seem to love the idea of having money. The same, of course, is true for extra-individual institutions. But is it really the case that even for the most megalomaniacal person out there that the acquisition and pursuit of money is an end wholly unto […]
The Federal Reserve Bank of Europe … and Other Startling Findings
Posted in Money on Aug 20th, 2012
In the most recent study of one of the many credit facilities set up by the Fed during the financial crisis: In this paper I use the TAF micro-level loan data and find that about 60 percent of TAF loans went to foreign banks that pledged asset-backed securities as collateral for these loans. The data and analysis […]
