The current policy debate is influenced by the possibility that the first-quarter GDP data were affected by “residual seasonality.”
June 8, 2015
Is Cheaper Oil Good News or Bad News for U.S. Economy?
Oil prices have declined substantially since the summer of 2014.
Posted at 7:00 am in Exports, Financial Markets, International Economics, Macroeconomics | Permalink | Comments (2)
June 5, 2015
Crisis Chronicles: Railway Mania, the Hungry Forties, and the Commercial Crisis of 1847
Money was plentiful in the United Kingdom in 1842, and with low yields on government bonds and railway shares paying handsome dividends, the desire to speculate spread—as one observer put it, “the contagion passed to all, and from the clerk to the capitalist the fever reigned uncontrollable and uncontrolled” (Francis’s History of the Bank of England).
June 3, 2015
Does Business Training Work?
Leaders of both developing and advanced economies believe that encouraging the development of small businesses will lead to job creation and economic growth.
June 1, 2015
What Drives Buyout Booms and Busts?
Valentin Haddad, Erik Loualiche, and Matthew Plosser Buyout activity by financial investors fluctuates substantially over time. In the United States, peak years result in close to one hundred public-to-private buyout transactions and trough years in as few as ten. The typical buyout is primarily funded by debt, hence the term “leveraged buyout” (or LBO). As […]
May 29, 2015
Historical Echoes: Move Over Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard, Let’s Pay Homage to the — Stereoscopic Viewer!
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.)
Posted at 7:00 am in Historical Echoes | Permalink
May 28, 2015
Just Released: 2015 SCE Housing Survey Shows Households Optimistic about Housing Market
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York today released results from its 2015 SCE Housing Survey.
Just Released: What Do Banking Supervisors Do?
In most developed economies, banking is among the most regulated and supervised sectors. While “regulation” and “supervision” are often used interchangeably, these two activities are distinct. Banking supervision is a complement to regulation, but its scope is much broader than simply ensuring that an institution is in compliance with regulation. Despite the importance of supervision, information about it is often limited, both because of the heavy reliance upon banks’ confidential information and because many supervisory activities and actions are themselves confidential. In a recently released Staff Report, we shed more light on the topic by describing the Federal Reserve’s supervisory approach for large, complex financial institutions and how supervision of such firms is conducted on a day-to-day basis at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as part of this broader supervisory program.
May 27, 2015
The Eurodollar Market in the United States
In February, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s trading desk announced it will publish a new overnight bank funding rate early next year.
May 20, 2015
Why Are Interest Rates So Low?
Marco Del Negro, Marc Giannoni, Matthew Cocci, Sara Shahanaghi, and Micah Smith Second post in the series In a recent series of blog posts, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Ben Bernanke, has asked the question: “Why are interest rates so low?” (See part 1, part 2, and part 3.) He refers, of […]
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