Policy

It's easy to understand how the money supply can drive prices when a commodity like gold is used as money.  In the gold rush days, California was basically on a ... [full story]

Payroll taxes not needed for Social Security benefit payments are used to buy non-negotiable Treasury bonds which earn interest at a market rate.  The bonds are held in the Social ... [full story]

Assume an economy with no government debt and a balanced budget of $2,000 billion.  Suppose the government plans a one-year program to refurbish the highway system at a cost of ... [full story]

In some countries, using the dollar in transactions is perfectly legal, in others it is not.  In a very few, the US dollar is the official currency, mostly in small ... [full story]

With the dollar as the world standard, the US is free to conduct its monetary policy independent of exchange rate fluctuations.  In this respect, other countries operate at a disadvantage.  ... [full story]

The world is on a de facto dollar standard, similar in some respects to the British pound sterling standard of the 19th and early 20th century.  When did the US ... [full story]

As long as foreigners run a net trade surplus with the U.S., their dollar-denominated assets will increase.  They can repatriate their dollar holdings individually, but not collectively.  A wave of ... [full story]

The U.S. trade deficit reflects the successful efforts of foreign exporters in the aggregate to increase their holdings of U.S. dollar assets.  They willingly offer their goods and services in ... [full story]

For over three decades, the U.S. has consistently imported more than it has exported.  That automatically increases foreign ownership of U.S. assets, both financial and real.  Many view the trade ... [full story]

Fiscal policy should enable the public to acquire sufficient net financial wealth, broadly distributed, to generate the spending needed to keep the economy prosperous.  A major part of that wealth ... [full story]