Posts by Ryan Avent

It’s not that difficult to understand why everyone would be ready to sound the alarm on inflation. The government has been borrowing heavily and the Federal Reserve has been massively expanding its balance sheet and holding its interest rate target at very near zero. In ordinary times, this combination would send prices soaring. And while [...]

The Washington Post’s Steven Mufson notices that oil prices aren’t behaving as we’d prefer, having climbed from under $40 per barrel to back within sight of $70 per barrel in just a few months. What gives?
There’s plenty of evidence to suggest prices should be falling. In industrialized countries, storage tanks are overflowing, with enough supplies [...]

The Washington Post, this morning:
Senior administration officials are considering the creation of a single agency to regulate the banking industry, replacing a patchwork of agencies that failed to prevent banks from falling into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, sources said.
Bloomberg, today:
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank ruled out creating a single [...]

It’s not easy to recall, but the cornerstone of the administration’s policy to stabilize the banking system is the so-called PPIP — the Public-Private Investment Partnerships designed to help get troubled assets off the balance sheets of the nation’s banks. The idea was to use up to $100 billion in remaining Troubled Asset Relief Program [...]

The real risk to the future of General Motors (other than the unpopular vehicles) is that a bankruptcy and reorganization process would not be quick, in what’s called a 363 sale, but would go through a standard Chapter 11 reorganization, which could take several years. A long and drawn out reorganization would probably have an [...]

Leading headlines this morning are two economic datapoints that count as positive in the current climate. Thursday is the day for weekly jobless claims, and while initial and continuing claims remain at extremely high levels (the latter hit yet another record), the steady downtick in initial weekly claims over the past months is good news. [...]

There are plenty of noteworthy quotes in the Peter Baker piece on former President Bill Clinton in The New York Times Magazine, and the published interview transcript that accompanies it. So far, this strikes me as the noteworthiest; while addressing criticisms of his administration in light of recent financial failures, Clinton said:
Then there’s the argument [...]

Let’s be clear, America has a debt problem. President Obama inherited a significant structural budget deficit (that is, a deficit that occurs even with the economy at full employment) from George W. Bush, which has grown substantially as the economy has weakened and the government has pursued countercyclical policies. Obama’s projected budgets get the deficit [...]

Specifically, Chapter 11. General Motors’ creditors have rejected the latest offer extended to them to facilitate an out-of-court restructuring — a swap of some $27 billion in GM debt for a 10 percent equity stake in the new, reorganized company. Creditors are complaining that union stakeholders were offered a much better deal than they were [...]

Noam Scheiber directs us to an interesting Politico assessment of how changes in the handling of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner have boosted his reputation:
They [Geithner's advisers] decided to “let Tim be Tim” and accepted the fact that his strength wasn’t giving a speech in front of a bunch of flags. Rather, they let reporters see [...]