A Ponzi scheme requires three things in order to be (temporarily) successful: a massive source of outside money, a sophisticated PR campaign, bloviating about its glories, and a “magic mushroom” to make people believe in it. U.S. monetary policy currently has all three.

As I discussed Monday in Part 1 of this column, the likely collapse in Miami of the Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations will be at worst a blip, at best a benefit to the countries concerned — FTAA, as an idea, was misguided from the word “Go”. In this part 2, I consider […]

The collapse at Cancun of the Doha round of world trade talks was a major blow for world prosperity for the next decade. The likely collapse in Miami of the Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations will be at worst a blip, at best a benefit — FTAA, as an idea, was misguided from […]

The 40th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination later this month is bringing the inevitable slew of retrospectives, either polishing the halo or belittling the achievements, according to taste. However, in the economic area, Kennedy’s greatest achievement was an anomalous one: he was the true father of the supply-side economic revolution.

Edwin Truman, former head of the International Finance Division of the Fed, spoke at the Institute for International Economics Thursday about the need for inflation targeting in monetary policy. However, it wouldn’t have worked in the late 90s, because published inflation figures ignore asset prices. Maybe the real problem of monetary policy is the lack […]