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With demand down, there's a new buyer of Treasurys in town

Nov 1, 2023
The Federal Reserve and major U.S. banks are buying fewer bonds than they used to. Hedge funds are picking up some of the slack.
The Treasury Department just released its quarterly refunding statement. Next week, it will auction off billions in bonds.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Federal Reserve losses contribute to federal deficit

Oct 24, 2023
When the central bank makes money, it hands it to the Treasury. But now it's losing money as it pays interest to banks on their deposits.
The Fed is, among other things, a bank for banks, and it pays interest to those banks. Those interest rates have gone up. Above, the Eccles building, which houses Fed governors' offices.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Was the Bank of England largely to blame for the UK’s inflation?

Aug 1, 2023
A new British pressure group is calling for the UK’s central bank to “lose the power to create unlimited amounts of money out of thin air.”
A new pressure group blames Britain’s central bank and its quantitative easing program for much of the problem in the United Kingdom.
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

To understand the Fed’s bond-buying dilemma, picture a lake

Jul 13, 2021
A Columbia Business School professor explains quantitative easing and the Feds' $120 billion per month bond-buying program with an analogy.
If water on a lake is too low, boats can't go from one side to the other smoothly. "The Fed is basically adding some water in that lake to keep the liquidity — or to keep the water — from completely drying out,” says Yiming Ma of Columbia Business School.
Ethan Miller via Getty Images

Did the Federal Reserve make economic inequality worse?

Mar 3, 2021
Fed watcher Karen Petrou believes so, and she says the Fed can fight inequality with targeted policies.
Karen Petrou, author of "Engine of Inequality," laments that investors win and savers lose. "Every time the Fed steps into the market, the markets go up. The markets run by the Fed's clock," she says.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

What if COVID-19 checks were a regular occurrence?

"You just get a much bigger fiscal bang for the buck," says Mark Blyth, the economics professor and author of "Angrynomics."
"We're managing to do it right now in the COVID pandemic. We send people checks," Blyth says. "Imagine if those checks were endowment checks."
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Europe considers quantitative easing

Jan 21, 2015
Move by European Central Bank could boost moribund eurozone economy.

For public good, not for profit.

Why inflation is a central banker's goal

Oct 31, 2014
A moderate rate of inflation is evidence of a growing economy

The numbers for October 29, 2014

Oct 29, 2014
Hurricane Sandy was a "secret disaster" for the Red Cross. Let's do the numbers.

What the end of Quantitative Easing will and won't mean

Oct 28, 2014
The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee is meeting today and tomorrow and many are expecting it to announce an end to the bond-buying program of the past six years. What has been the effect of quantitative easing? And are reports of the end of stimulus misleading?