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Just about everyone expects the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to raise its target interest rate at its meeting this week. The talk of raising rates has occupied newspaper columns all year, and the comments from FOMC participants have become stronger in recent months in discussing their desire to raise rates. But the decision to raise rates

With a new year come new opportunities as well as new issues to take into consideration. Here are the five most important issues to keep an eye on in 2017. 1. Trump Presidency The most important issue facing monetary policy, at least in the United States, will be the incoming Trump Administration. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is

The ECB officially decided to end production of the €500 note yesterday, with production  winding down at the end of 2018 . Ostensibly this was done to prohibit the use of the €500 note by criminals and terrorists. While this is just one step in the long-term War on Cash, what might some of the more immediate effects be? 1. Increased Demand –

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided yesterday to leave the target federal funds rate at between 0.25 and 0.50 percent . This was widely expected, given the dismal jobs report that was published two weeks ago and the uncertainty in the banking sector surrounding the UK’s upcoming Brexit vote. Some FOMC participants had in recent weeks

We’ve all run into someone who thinks that all it take to bring about prosperity is to give everyone a million dollars. If everyone is a millionaire, we’ll all be rich and be able to afford anything we want, or so the thinking goes. Any sound economist knows that wouldn’t be the case, however. If everyone were given a million dollars the increased

Many people familiar with Austrian economics are familiar with the Skyscraper Index , popularized by Mark Thornton. And while there may not be a perfect correlation between the building of large skyscrapers and business cycles, it is still the case that the same conditions that lead to the building of mega-skyscrapers are those that lead to the

The week before last marked my first time attending the Austrian Economics Research Conference , an annual meeting of economists of the Austrian school hosted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, AL. While many of the presentations were interesting, one that I found particularly helpful was that by Patrick Barron of the University of Iowa.