The USA economy is still growing but with widespread signs of deceleration – so says the Federal Reserve in their September 2009 Beige Book.
Category Archives: Government
Gary Gorton replaces Gordon Gekko at the Fed
It appears that the Fed has regained some intellectual awareness of what is going on. The problem now is that they have to find new ideas how to run monetary policy by whatever instruments they can think of. One outcome is the possibility that they may abandon inflation targeting.
Fed FOMC Meeting Minutes for August 2010 – Blind to the Future (and the Present too)
We are lucky that few read these meeting minutes, or more investors would be headed to the doors. I find the FOMC reasonably uncertain about the future.
Economy and GDP
Economic releases w/e 27 August 2010 continue to paint an economy with slowing but positive growth. GDP for 2Q2010 was revised downward to 1.6% annualized.
Bloggers Visit Treasury
The Treasury Department has started a program to make top Treasury officials, including the Secretary of the Treasury, available for give-and-take discussions (off the record, no attributed quotes allowed) with small groups of bloggers. The author was privileged to be one of seven guests to attend such a meeting on August 16, 2010. The meeting involved some contentious discussion and lasted for 2 1/2 hours. 30 minutes more than the scheduled time. This is the first of the author’s reports on that experience.