The coronavirus crisis has had a significant impact on international car markets in the past year. The number of newly registered passenger cars in the 27 EU member states fell by around 24 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year. This is accordi…
This week, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to not renew contracts with privately operated prisons – a process that had been started once before during the Obama administration but was reversed un…
On Wednesday Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that the U.S. economy is still “a long way from a full recovery,” as the Federal Open Market Committee pledged to use “its full range of tools to support the U.S. economy in this challenging time”…
In what could have been a relatively quiet post-inauguration week, a breathtaking story of David vs. Goliath played out on the world stage, turning financial markets upside down and wreaking havoc on Wall Street. But let’s start from the beginning. Ear…
It’s a reverse Hotel California. You can leave, but you can never check in.
Today’s Fed QE
While social spending as a share of GDP has generally declined in OECD countries over the past ten years, France remains the country which is most generous in terms of its social benefits. In 2019, the equivalent of almost a third of French GDP was spe…
The story is barely believable but Main Street has, temporarily at least, managed to turn the tables on Wall Street. Hedge funds have had to cut their losses after a group of amateur traders came together to push up shares in GameStop. The action taken…
He who shorts what isn’t his’n must buy it back or go to prison.
Monetary policy can be implemented through outright purchases or sales of securities, which permanently changes the size of the Federal Reserve’s System Open Market Account (SOMA) portfolio.