The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) released new jobs data on Friday. According to the report, seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs rose 339,000 jobs in May, well above forecasts. The unemployment rate rose slightly from 3.4 percent to 3.7 percent (month over...
Earlier this month, Larry Kudlow insisted that it is "it's incumbent on the U.S. government, no matter who's in power, to maintain the reserve currency status of the dollar." Kudlow laments that a toppling of the dollar from that perch "seems to be the direction we're...
A bill introduced in the Florida House would ban the use of central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the state. Rep. Wyman Duggan (R) brought House Bill 7049 (H7049) to the House Commerce Committee on March 28, and the committee voted along party lines to officially...
According to the St. Louis Fed, there are three functions of money. First, as a store of value. Second, as a unit of account. Finally, as a medium of exchange. The enumeration of these functions represents an attempt to present money and the banking system as...
New York Times Technology writer David Streitfeld recently examined the role the Federal Reserve’s easy money policies played in the rise and, if not fall then at least slippage, of many technology companies. Immediately after the bursting of the housing bubble (which...
On Friday, residential real estate brokerage firm Redfin released new data on home prices, showing that prices fell 0.6 percent in February, year over year. According to Redfin's numbers, this was the first time that home prices actually fell since 2012. The...
Some big, round-numbered interest rate thresholds have been passed in recent days including 4.0% on the 10-year UST, 5.0% on the 2-year UST and 7.0% on the 30-year mortgage. These all come at the end of extended round trips, of course, so the question at hand is how...
Every time the United States reaches its debt limit, we read that it is important to reach an agreement to lift it. The narrative is that the debt ceiling must be raised, or the US economy will suffer a severe contraction. There is even an episode of a TV series,...
Whether you like it or not, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are coming. That’s the message in a recent tech column in the Wall Street Journal. A similar tone can be found coming from organizations like the World Economic Forum, the International Monetary Fund,...
The Wall Street Journal today brings word that a professor Efraim Benmelech of the finance department at Northwestern University thinks the Fed is hurting housing and the consumer too much. Opined he, ...those higher interest rates are making mortgages more expensive...
Last week, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against Anatoly Legkodymov for violating anti‐money laundering laws while operating Bitzlato, an off‐shore crypto exchange alleged to have processed over $700 million in illicit funds over several years....
Here we go again. Every few years in Congress there is a purely political battle over the debt ceiling. We're supposed to be horrified and worried that the U.S. might default on some of its debt. Some commentators will insist the U.S. has never defaulted, and that...
Today [January 11] in 1757, it is generally believed Alexander Hamilton was born. As John Adams put it, he was “the bastard brat of a Scottish peddler.” Born out of wedlock on the British isle of Nevis, Hamilton would become one of the most influential political...
You can count on the knuckleheads at Bloomberg to start off the year with still another dead-wrong proposition. That is, more nonsense about the “strong” labor market—-one so strong that it is purportedly even defying the mighty Fed. The latest US employment report is...
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