Many of the hopes arising from the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall were still unrealized in 2010 and remain so today, especially in monetary policy and financial supervision. The major players that helped bring on the 2008 financial crisis still exist, with rising levels of moral hazard, including...

In his paper "Challenges Associated with the Expansion of Deposit Insurance Coverage during Fall 2008”" Sebastian Schich of the OECD has written an excellent overview of the current situation of bank deposit insurance in the industrial economies of the world. He finds that, facing a crisis...

This working paper looks at excess reserves in historical context and analyzes whether they constitute a monetary policy problem for the Federal Reserve System (the “Fed”) or a potentially inflationary problem for the rest of us. Generally, this analysis shows that both absolute and relative...