Category Archives: Monetary Policy

President Obama just widened the race for Fed chair. Up on Capitol Hill he mentioned Don Kohn along with Larry Summers and Janet Yellen. So we should widen the hunt for things that Don has said that help answer the … Continue reading →

The financial press has narrowed down the race for the next Fed Chair to Larry Summers and Janet Yellen. Though there are other candidates with Democratic credentials, such as Alan Blinder and Tim Geithner, most stories are about a pairwise … Continue reading →

In Jared Bernstein’s interesting recent piece “Checking in on the Taylor Rule and the Fed,” he writes that the federal funds rate has been “camping out at between -1 and -2 percent” according to the Taylor Rule. He then goes … Continue reading →

Some of the points Paul Krugman makes in his response to my article in today’s Wall Street Journal criticizing unconventional monetary policy are irrelevant.  The others are wrong. First, he goes after other people who are critical of the unconventional policy, as … Continue reading →

In my article on British monetary policy in yesterday’s Financial Times, I suggested (recommendation 5) that as the Bank of England seeks a way to implement forward guidance it might want to consider a “rule for all seasons” as a … Continue reading →

With Mervyn King stepping down as head of the Bank of England this weekend there are many good things that can be said and have been said about his public service.  (Here is what I said at the conference in … Continue reading →

Many agree that the provision of liquidity by the Fed during the panic period in the fall of 2008 was helpful in alleviating severe stress in the markets and rebuilding confidence. Most criticism of the Fed pertains to the period … Continue reading →

I listened to Raghu Rajan deliver the first Andrew Crockett Memorial Lecture at the BIS last Sunday (written version here).  Raghu’s lecture followed several moving tributes to Andrew’s remarkable contributions to policy at the IMF, the Bank of England, the … Continue reading →

The most frequently asked question by central bankers at the various gatherings at the BIS annual general meeting in Basel was: Q: What do you think caused the market turbulence last week? And there were nearly as many answers as … Continue reading →

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) held its annual monetary conference in Luzern Switzerland over the past two days. I presented a paper on cross-border monetary policy spillovers, which was unexpectedly and vividly brought to life by the turmoil in … Continue reading →