Amy Farber
You might hear: “Economy eschmonomy.” Another possibility is: “Economy schmeconomy.” This phenomenon of repeating a word with the prefix shm- (or sometimes “schm-“), is called shm-reduplication. It challenges the relevance and sometimes the value of the repeated word, and examples can be found in articles like this Newsday clip “The High End: Economy, shmeconomy — the rich still travel.”
Amy Farber
Which of the following statements is true (you may choose more than one): (a) you are more likely to get a job at the Fed if you look like a Barbie doll, (b) you are less likely to get a job at the Fed if you look like a Barbie doll, (c) the inventor of the Barbie doll sat on the Board of Directors of a Federal Reserve Bank, (d) a key cleaner/restorer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York building has strong ties to Architect Barbie, (e) a Federal Reserve Bank has used Barbie in its economic education program.
Amy Farber
You might think that, given the extreme levels of wealth that exist today, the richest economist would be someone who was still alive. But you’d be wrong.
Amy Farber
Have you seen these people? You might come upon them wearing historic period garb.
Amy Farber
Mary Roebling (1904-94) was the first woman to serve as president of a major U.S. bank.
Amy Farber
One could say that Sesame Street character Bert’s extreme interest in paper clips is misguided, but his obsession with pigeons? Maybe not so much. Pigeons have played a role in financial history, with one such role described by Tony Chen during his walking tour of the Hutong district in Beijing.
Amy Farber
Within the New York Public Library Digital Collections is the Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views. Stereoscopic photographs were viewed with a stereoscopic viewer or stereoscope. According to the “About” tab of the NYPL page for the collection, “During the period between the 1850s and the 1910s, stereos were a mainstay of home entertainment, perhaps second only to reading as a personal leisure activity.” They also functioned as a way for people to travel vicariously, or as an aid to the study of history and other cultures. You know you’ve found an image meant to be seen with a stereoscopic viewer when it is double, with the images slightly askew from one another. The kinds of images that were particularly suitable as subjects for stereoscopic photography were those involving objects at varying distances from the viewer (for example, landscapes and cityscapes). (This is only one form of stereoscopy, which incorporates other technologies.)
Megan Cohen
U.S. savings bonds were created in 1935 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt to assist the United States in raising funds for a variety of government programs.
Amy Farber
It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and we’re not asking you questions or dispensing advice about it — that’s not (yet) our business.
Amy Farber
Did’ya ever notice how silly those Historical Echoes posts can get?
Liberty Street Economics features insight and analysis from New York Fed economists working at the intersection of research and policy. Launched in 2011, the blog takes its name from the Bank’s headquarters at 33 Liberty Street in Manhattan’s Financial District.
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