Sublime

In the short run, this policy orthodoxy achieved its stated goal, but in the longer run it acted to block the natural process of restoring robust finance, with the consequence that an increasingly fragile financial structure served as an increasing obstacle to capital investment and hence also to robust economic performance. Because of government i

Whether you credit Paul Volcker for breaking inflation through aggressive monetary policy tightening, or a fall in oil prices due to abundant supply in the early ‘80s, by 1980 the 10-year run in commodities was over, as so was the weakness in the US Dollar.

In the 1960s, years of cajoling by Martin’s Fed to persuade President Lyndon Johnson’s administration to restrain the budget deficit failed to pay off. Despite constant soul-searching at Fed meetings on the danger of price rises taking hold in the buoyant American economy, the Fed underestimated the persistence of inflationary pressures.

With the be

During the postwar quarter century, the Chase Manhattan Bank was very probably the single most powerful financial institution on the face of the earth.