Have Fannie and Freddie Paid the Taxpayers Back Yet?
The distinguished judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit have considered how much Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have paid the Treasury Department to compensate the taxpayers for the...
View ArticleThe New Campus Housing Bubble
From Forbes: My good friend, banker-scholar Alex Pollock of the R Street Institute, has shared with me some startling new data. High priced, comparatively luxury college student housing has been...
View ArticleFund managers are the agents of shareholders
“Large institutional shareholders, notably BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, recognise that companies must serve broader social purposes,” writes Martin Lipton (Opinion, September 18). There is one...
View ArticleHUD’s Implementation of the Fair Housing Act’s Disparate Impact Standard
EDWARD J. PINTO and TOBIAS J. PETER ALEX J. POLLOCK AEI Housing Center R Street Institute September 26, 2019 Department of Housing and Urban...
View ArticleSurprised again
“Why We’re Always Surprised” is the subtitle of my book, Finance and Philosophy. The reason we are so often surprised by financial developments, I argue in the book, is that “The financial future is...
View ArticleUnfunded Pensions: Watch out, bondholders!
A reorganization plan for the debt of the government of Puerto Rico was submitted to the court Sept. 27 by the Puerto Rico Oversight Board. It covers $35 billion of general obligation and other bonds,...
View ArticleActually, Sovereigns Do Go Broke
The ballooning debt of the United States government is an especially large and interesting case of sovereign debt. One chronicler of sovereign debt’s long, global, colorful history, Max Winkler,...
View ArticleDo you believe central bank assurances?
To reassure savers worried about the safety of their deposits, the Reserve Bank of India (India’s central bank) recently announced it “would like to assure the general public that Indian banking is...
View ArticleGiven Enough Time
Randall W. Forsyth distorts Murphy’s celebrated law with a truncated version of it, writing “whatever can go wrong, will” (“Sometimes Things Can Go Right—and a Lot Did for the Stock Market Last Week,”...
View ArticleEliminating Fannie & Freddie’s Competitive Advantages by Administrative Action
Among the strategic goals for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac specified by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in Congressional testimony on October 22 was: “Legislation could achieve lasting...
View ArticleShould the Fed Be Run by Economists?
Tomorrow, November 2, marks two years since the nomination of Jerome Powell to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Leaving aside President Trump’s subsequent expressions of regret at his choice, the...
View ArticleWhy Did Isaac Newton Lose His Shirt in Financial Speculation? Author Alex...
From Institute for New Economic Thinking: In a conversation with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, author Alex J. Pollock explains why our flawed thinking leads us into financial and economic...
View ArticleWill the Federal Reserve have a monopoly in digital currencies?
Cryptocurrencies started out with a libertarian desire to give people an alternative to national money, thereby escaping government power to depreciate their fiat currencies through inflation. Many...
View ArticleFinancial Goblins
Just in time for Halloween last week, three financial goblins appeared in the Financial Times in the same October 31 issue: -China Minsheng Investment Group, “the country’s largest private investment...
View ArticleDaybook-Next-Thursday-General
From abc 7: Thursday, Nov. 14 10:00 AM AEI discussion on the Federal Reserve and the ‘next economic crisis’ – ‘Can the Federal Reserve manage the next economic crisis? American Enterprise Institute...
View ArticleWeekly Rundown
From National Council of Higher Education Resources: On Thursday at 10:00 a.m., the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) holds an event titled, “Can the Federal Reserve Manage the Next Economic Crisis?”...
View ArticleMoney and the Constitution
From The Federalist Society: R Street Fellow Alex Pollock appears at 1:06. Money. We all use it, for exchange, for store of value, for identifying prices, and many other purposes and exercises. In the...
View ArticleCan the Federal Reserve manage the next economic crisis?
From American Enterprise Institute: R Street Fellow Alex Pollock appears at 1:11:49. When the next recession hits, will the government be able to stimulate growth? Massive budget deficits are pushing...
View ArticleCongress Must Take Control of Money Back From the Fed
The question of Money is always political. What is the definition of “money,” what is its nature, how is it created, and how are debts settled—these are questions that have been much debated over...
View ArticleSurprised again
“Why We’re Always Surprised” is the subtitle of my book, Finance and Philosophy. The reason we are so often surprised by financial developments, I argue in the book, is that “The financial future is...
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