Tag: Fed Portfolio

In Search of Optimal, Equal Monetary Policy

~ Karen Petrou ~ 2 Comments

By Karen Petrou

The Fed is listening.  In a recent blog post, we analyzed a brand-new database which Fed staff have constructed to capture distributional wealth effects across the U.S. economy.  Now, we turn to a brand new paper from the president and staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that not only recognizes the distributional impact of monetary policy – a Fed first – but tries to do something about it.  The paper proposes an “optimal” monetary policy based on a complex model with several uncertain assumptions, no conclusion about whether it would work in concert with a still-huge Fed portfolio, and nothing more than a theoretical hypothesis.  Still, it’s a start. Continue reading “In Search of Optimal, Equal Monetary Policy” →

Greenspan’s Market Put is Powell’s Inequality Short

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By Karen Petrou

On Friday, March 22, the Federal Reserve finally conceded that aggregates and averages mask all-important economic facts, issuing for the first time the “Distributional Financial Accounts of the United States” (DFA).  This will be a quarterly staff assessment of U.S. wealth equality – or, as its data forcefully demonstrate, the lack thereof.  However, the DFA does something more:  it also tracks wealth inequality across the business-cycle over almost three decades, showing clearly that equity-price increases exacerbate wealth inequality.  As a result, the more the Fed strengthens the stock market by keeping rates low and its portfolio huge, the worse U.S. wealth inequality grows.  Continue reading “Greenspan’s Market Put is Powell’s Inequality Short” →

How the Other Half Goes Broke

~ Karen Petrou ~ 4 Comments

By Karen Shaw Petrou and Matthew Shaw

In our last blog post, we laid out the most telling inequality-data points from an important new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis which for the first time runs from 1949 to 2016 and adds many critical equality measures.  These data show more decisively than ever not only that wealth inequality in 2016 is the worst since at least the Second World War, but also that this is due to who holds the assets that have gained the most.  Since which assets return how much is due now in large part to post-crisis monetary and regulatory policy rather than to market forces and broader macroeconomic trends, it’s post-crisis policy – not forces from beyond – that increasingly dictates U.S. economic equality. Continue reading “How the Other Half Goes Broke” →

Disquiet on the Home Front

~ Karen Petrou ~ 2 Comments

By Karen Shaw Petrou and Basil N. Petrou

On June 20, FRB Chairman Powell said, “Nine years into an expansion that has sometimes proceeded slowly, the U.S. economy is performing very well.”  Although Mr. Powell noted low labor participation, puzzling inflation, and problematic wage growth, he said that all will come right as long as the Fed stays the course.  No mention was made of unprecedented U.S. income and wealth inequality or of a housing market serving mostly the oldest, wealthiest, and most coastal among us.  Too bad – inequality and the impediments to effective monetary-policy transmission it erects are among the most important reasons that the nine years Mr. Powell cites have seen the slowest recovery in decades in concert with new threats to financial stability. Continue reading “Disquiet on the Home Front” →

Vollgeld as Voldemort: Is the Swiss Villain Coming for American Banking?

~ Karen Petrou ~ 1 Comment

By Karen Shaw Petrou

On Sunday, June 10, Swiss voters resoundingly rejected “Vollgeld” – a sovereign-money referendum that would have made the Swiss National Bank an all-powerful arbiter of money and credit.  Defeat notwithstanding, Vollgeld is just a test run.  In this blog post, we consider Vollgeld’s impact with particular attention to the U.S.  Any doubts that its impact could be significant is dispelled by a brand-new paper laying out a U.S. Vollgeld from a think tank with ties to Sen. Warren – a national leader of progressive Democrats with considerable power to influence thinking, if not, for now, actual legislation.  Continue reading “Vollgeld as Voldemort: Is the Swiss Villain Coming for American Banking?” →