Shape up or break up. That’s the message Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William Dudley gave to Wall Street yesterday. Too much risk taking and law breaking means government will have to take action without some big changes by … read more
The financial institution with by far the largest mismatch of anybody is the Federal Reserve itself, with its $2.8 trillion of overnight floating rate deposits funding very long-term, fixed rate mortgage and Treasury securities, with no hedging. So in addition to pumping up asset price inflations through its “QE,” the Fed has sucked a gigantic amount of interest rate risk into itself. read more
Republicans want the Fed to follow a policy rule. So do I. Here is what GOPers have in mind (via the Houston Chronicle): “The most prominent piece of legislation….would require the Fed to set interest rates based on something like the Taylor Rule, a formula written by Stanford economist John Taylor, which specifies the appropriate level of interest rates based on the pace of inflation and the gap between actual and potential economic output.” read more
