Author: John Mason

Last week, April 7, 2011 to be exact, things started to change. Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, guided the ECB to an increase in its policy interest rate, moving from 1.00 percent to 1.25 percent....

The “sure” bet over the past year or so has been that the Federal Reserve would keep short term interest rates as low as they could for a long time.In fact, the Fed told us they would keep short term interest rates...

Over the past six months or so the total assets of the smaller banks in the United States (smaller than the largest 25 banks) have remained relatively constant. Total assets averaged about $3.6 trillion in September 2010 and...

Suggested reading for today: Gillian Tett’s piece in the Financial Times, “ECB rate rise will spark new debate about US tightening.”...

I look at the following chart and ask whether or not there is some constant factor that stands behind the decline in the value of the dollar over the past fifty years. Well, you say the chart only covers roughly forty years, why...

How important is reputation in monetary circles?I believe that the general movement in the value of the Euro relative to the United States dollar over the past seven months or so gives a picture of how the reputation of a...

On March 30, 2011, reserve balances with Federal Reserve banks, a good proxy for the amount of excess reserves in the commercial banking system, almost reached $1.5 trillion!This total is approximately $450 billion more than was...