Leading authorities in the United States, including the Congressional Budget Office, use the term unsustainable to describe the long-term fiscal outlook. By the year 2080, spending on entitlements alone could exceed total federal tax revenues. In the very long run (meaning from the year 2035...

This essay offers an alternative way to look at macroeconomics. The current standard approach uses aggregate supply and aggregate demand (AS-AD). I call the alternative approach patterns of sustainable specialization and trade (PSST). The PSST approach combines many old and new strands in...

This paper looks at the roots of the current crisis through an analytical framework of bad bets, excessive leverage, domino effects, and 21st-century bank runs. The paper shows that broad policy areas-including housing policy, capital regulations for banks, industry structure and competition,...

In an effort to provide relief in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress charged the Small. Business Administration (SBA) with the task of administering a variety of credit programs, in part with the help and guidance of the US Department of the Treasury.Unfortunately, not only is the SBA...

We examine the risk characteristics of each portion of IO/PO mortgage strips, present results of a valuation model of these securities, and examine market prices of both the interest-only and principal-only portions of mortgage pools. We show that IO/PO securities are highly sensitive to the...

The U.S. government has made a set of promises that it cannot keep. The current level of outstanding debt is a relatively small part of the problem. Therefore, inflation is unlikely to solve the problem. The promises that are most important to change are Social Security and Medicare. It is easy...

Recently, the Federal Reserve has significantly altered the procedures and goals that it had followed for decades. It has more than doubled its balance sheet, paid interest to banks on reserves held as deposits with the Fed, made decisions about which institutions to prop up and which should be...