The Fed and Treasury

Will Trump Try to ‘Overrule’ Monetary Policy?

By Mark Thoma

How will the Federal Reserve evolve during Donald Trump’s term as president? Presently, three of the seven positions on the Federal Reserve Board are vacant. These vacancies, along with the...
Why the Treasury Is Ending a Low-Income Retirement Saving Program

By Beth Braverman

Less than two years after the Obama administration rolled out a myRA, a savings program aimed at helping the millions of Americans without access to a retirement account through work, the Trump...
Will Janet Yellen Give Wall Street a Scare?

By Anthony Mirhaydari

For years, the Federal Reserve has been unable to convince the market it's serious about aggressively tightening policy. Janet Yellen and her cohorts have been guilty of "crying wolf," constantly...
Is the Fed About to Wage War on the Rich?

By Anthony Mirhaydari

For years, stocks have been driven relentlessly higher thanks to a single statement that summarized the aggressive central bank largesse since the eurozone crisis flared up in 2012: Policymakers...
Is the Fed Fighting the Trump Rally?

By Anthony Mirhaydari

The evidence is growing that the Federal Reserve’s policymakers are actively working to lean against the stock market's rise, a dramatic reversal from the years of policy support stock market bulls...

The Fed’s Big Mistake: Rate Hikes Hurt US Workers

By David Dayen

Protesters rallied in Washington, New York City and Philadelphia yesterday against an imminent government action that would damage the financial prospects of ordinary workers. And no, it had nothing...
The Fed, the Reality of Tax Cuts, and Donald Trump

By Mark Thoma

For many years, Republicans argued that tax cuts for the wealthy pay for themselves. Cutting taxes on the wealthy, according to Republicans, allows them to keep a larger share of anything new they...
Will Unwinding the Fed’s $4.5 Trillion Balance Sheet Kill the Bull Market?

By Anthony Mirhaydari

Over the last decade, investors have grown accustomed to a Federal Reserve that constantly coddled them, allayed their fears and did everything possible to support the financial markets and asset...
The Key to This Market: Here’s What Will Determine if Stocks Rise or Fall

By Anthony Mirhaydari

For now, instead of putting pressure on risk assets, the Fed's newfound hawkishness is bolstering the reflation trade by lifting the dollar higher and attracting global capital into U.S. assets. Same...
Can Wall Street Handle Higher Interest Rates?

By Anthony Mirhaydari

The Federal Reserve just raised interest rates for the second time in three months, signaling a dramatic quickening of its prior pace. For the first time in more than a decade, Fed policymakers are...

Yellin’ for Yellen? Why the Market Rally May Not Last

By Suzanne McGee, The Fiscal Times

Does the bursting of the Summers trial balloon really matter to investors? Not much, despite the fact that some traders – it wasn’t just the media – cited the Fed drama as one of the reasons for...
World Markets Ride Higher on “Summers’ Breeze”

By David Francis

There’s a lot of uncertainty floating around global stock indexes this week. German elections are set for next Sunday, and neither Angela Merkel nor her opponent, former German finance minister Peer...
5 Years After the Crisis: Blame Washington or Wall Street?

By Suzanne McGee, The Fiscal Times

As all the postmortems take place around the fifth anniversary of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, one of the most significant questions boils down to whether it was the financial institutions that...
Summers Clears the Way for Yellen by Dropping Out

By Zachary A. Goldfarb, The Washington Post

Former White House economic adviser and Treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers has withdrawn his name as a candidate for Federal Reserve chairman, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday...
What Verizon’s Huge Debt Deal Says About the Bond Market

By Suzanne McGee, The Fiscal Times

The massive $49 billion bond offering by Verizon Communications this week – far and away the largest of its kind ever seen – is serving as a great test of investor sentiment at a key turning point...

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