In late 2008 and early 2009, there has been a serious deterioration in the economic outlook of political leaders, the media and many economic analysts. Comparisons of recent performance and the outlook have degenerated into comparisons with the Great Depression of the 1930s, suggesting that the...

Monetary policy has become difficult to characterize or follow since 2007. A debate as to whether interest rate targets or monetary aggregate targets are better indicators of policy and prospective outcomes has given way to a new credit policy built on inflating the Federal Reserve (Fed) balance...

Milton Friedman, one of greatest economists of all time, died on November 16, 2006 at age 94. He was famous for his conclusion that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” and for the related notion that ultimately the only thing a central bank, such as the Federal...

Proponents of inflation targeting suggest that countries using this tool understand better, their responsibility for price stability and are able to better communicate their superior policy target. Thus, they also should achieve lower inflation. Fed Chair Ben Bernanke is a strong proponent of...

We analyze the properties of the natural rate of interest in an economy where nominal debt contracts generate a spread between loan rates and the policy interest rate. In our model, monetary policy has real effects in the flexible-price equilibrium, because it affects the credit spread. Relying...

The U.S. entered a recession in December 2007. Coming in train with a foreclosure crisis that began in late 2006 and its associated financial crisis that began in August 2007, there is a tendency for analysts to attribute the recession to the financial crisis. The worst aspects of the financial...

The continuing foreclosure crisis worsened in October 2008. The Federal Reserve (Fed) continued the aggressive expansion of new private credit that it began in mid-September and it created three new credit facilities to add to the plethora of other facilities created since the financial crisis...

This paper puts forward a characterization of the structural features of the economic system relevant to the monetary-policy decisions of the European Central Bank. The econometric analysis adopts a parsimonious VAR representation of three key macroeconomic variables (interest rates, prices and...