The Gold Standard 

The odds are that Ben Bernanke’s job will eventually go to Vice Chair Janet Yellen. As Wall Street Journal columnist Al Lewis recently wrote, “if she gets Ben Bernanke's job at the Federal Reserve, she's going to keep flooding the world with money.”

The New Yorker’s John Cassidy has written: “Other possible candidates include Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Bernanke himself, although it’s been widely reported that Geithner isn’t interested and Bernanke doesn’t want to be reappointed. Given Yellen’s résumé, she’s a just Read more

Apparently, the other central banks of the world have not all necessarily gotten Ben Bernanke’s memo about transparency. Some folks still must read tea leaves rather than transcripts. The Financial Times’ Alice Ross and Claire Jones recently noted: “Traders of Japan’s currency became unusually fond of the Tokyo night air last year. Long after their colleagues had gone home, the traders left the grand investment houses that dominate the skyline of the Marunouchi financial district and strolled north for a block or two.

Monetary policy has become a "rule of men and not of law."  There is no "golden rule" that, classically and, according to then-governor Ben Bernanke, in a 2004 speech at Washington and Lee University, worked well:

“The gold standard appeared to be highly successful from about 1870 to the beginning of World War I in 1914. During the so-called ‘classical gold standard period,’ international trade and capital flows expanded markedly, and central banks experienced relatively few problems ensuring that their curren Read more

And his name is Ben Bernanke. The beard – albeit carefully trimmed – is a dead giveaway. Don’t let those sober suits fool you. Underneath lies a heart that beats red with quantitative easing. The Fed Chairman shed his usual winter disguise in mid-December when he revealed a new round of monetary magic. (Past quantitative easing was such a success, mind you.)

From the way that the Fed is buying Treasurys, one might think that the Federal government had been good this year...when most of us know that by many any objective Read more