Hardly anyone noted last week that Monday was the centennial of President Woodrow Wilson’s signing of the Federal Reserve Act. Perhaps that is as it should be. The media take little notice of anniversaries of agencies like the Food and…
Inside the military pension cutback
A little-noted feature of the recent budget bill, together with wrangling in many states over public employee pensions, raises a question that has economic implications as well as legal and moral ones: Are defined-benefit pension plans explicit contracts of compensation…
It’s time to question the Fed’s influence
The Federal Reserve’s policy-making Open-Market Committee met this week and, as many expected, decided to reduce its large monthly purchases of bonds. It pays for these bonds by creating new bank reserves that, in turn, increase the money supply and…
GM bailout legacy a debate for the ages
On Dec. 9, the U.S. Treasury sold off the last block of stock it held in the “new” General Motors, thus ending one facet of the private company bailouts stemming from the financial debacle that unfurled 2007-2008 and still looms…