A summary of Federal Reserve strategies from BusinessWeek’s James Cooper:

"Rate increases will come in conjunction with the Fed's new authority to pay banks interest on their deposits. Manipulating this rate, now set at 0.25%, will make it easier for the Fed to control the main target rate, which could be difficult amid the flood of cash sloshing ( Read more... )

I thought this News Hour story was an informative description about where the government is getting the money for all these bailouts. However, I think it misses on important detail. When the Fed “gives” money to the banks, it takes on some of the bank’s assets in exchange.

A concise description of the Fed’s recent efforts and its balance sheet.

A couple interesting examples of government intervention in the economy:

A description of how the Swedish central bank bailed out a major commercial bank in 1991.

The Israeli government establishes incentives to favor zero emission cars . Zero emission cars would be taxed 10%, 30% for hybrids, and 79% for regular cars. What makes this story ( Read more... )

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave an interesting speech on the U.S. current account deficit (i.e. trade deficit) and thoughts on the U.S. savings rate. The full speech is here. Thanks to Greg Mankiw for bringing the speech to my attention. Here are some excerpts:
What are the prospects for a gradual and orderly rebalancing of spending and external ( Read more... )