The Federal Reserve did not only vow to maintain a zero interest-rate policy through the end of 2014 (a policy that has its critics, incidentally). They also set an explicit interest rate target for the first time ever, as far as I can tell. The Federal Reserve took the historic step on Wednesday of setting [...]

Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke acknowledged yesterday that the central bank may need to do a better job dealing with asset bubbles. I think I just heard Dean Baker’s head explode. Specifically, Bernanke said that he would move to use interest rate policy and not just regulatory tools to head off bubbles. “In the decades [...]

In a rare attempt to intervene in the policymaking of an independent agency, the four top Republicans in the House and Senate wrote a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, warning him against further steps to use monetary policy to boost the struggling US economy. The group, which included the top two Republicans in [...]

Agreed with Joe Nocera: if you want to take a look at the decisions that will matter on jobs and the economy for the next 14 months, you can’t look to Congress, or the White House. You have to look to the Federal Reserve, which is holding a two-day meeting to assess all potential avenues [...]

Realistically, it’s not all that worth discussing the American Jobs Act as a policy matter, because unless the President uses the Super Committee, the plan is fairly DOA. Republicans may cut it to ribbons and pass the parts they like, but that’s about it. And the Super Committee option, which would require the President to [...]

Yesterday, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans came out in favor of reality, seeing the economy as it is and the Fed with a mandate to provide whatever relief they can: The Federal Reserve should take further easing steps because the economy is “moving sideways” and the labor market is in a recession-like state, said Charles [...]

Ben Bernanke’s highly anticipated speech today in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, beginning at this hour, is likely to end up saying mostly nothing in terms of concrete steps the Federal Reserve will take to boost economic performance. In the past, Bernanke has offered a list of options that the Fed could do in that regard, but [...]

Back in the Alan Greenspan days at the Federal Reserve, his every utterance would be subject to postulates and theories that would send the markets soaring or crashing within hours. I think we’re leading to that kind of dynamic with Ben Bernanke. The markets want a sign that some monetary stimulus is coming to rescue [...]

I’m not sure if this is information we already knew from the Fed audit, or an additional set of data, or maybe just the specifics that came out of that Bloomberg FOIA request. At any rate, Bloomberg has presented it in a very direct manner with a very provocative title: “Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 [...]

James Fallows, by way of recommending a news item, lays out the key problem with our political system, media structure and economic trajectory. We’ve been chronicling this for close to two years, but he condenses it into two paragraphs. Since winning control of the House, the Republican leadership has been brilliantly successful in convincing some [...]

Well, Rick Perry entered the Presidential race with a splash. He spent the day in Iowa questioning Barack Obama’s patriotism, asserting that the military could only respect a veteran as their commander-in-chief and threatening Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke: Texas Governor Rick Perry, who entered the presidential campaign on Saturday, appeared to suggest a violent [...]