Janet Yellen

For years the Federal Reserve and many other central banks around the world have declared that a key element of monetary policy is the targeting of a two percent rate of annual price inflation.

Just how overregulated are America’s banks?

When is the price of some marketable good or service at or near zero? When either the supply of it is so plentiful that virtually any demand, no matter how great, can be satisfied. Or when no matter how large or small the supply of it may be, people’s demand for it is so low that nobody is willing to practically pay anything for it.

Since the economic crisis of 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve – America’s central bank – has expanded the money supply in the banking system by over $4 trillion, and has manipulated key interest rates to keep them so artificially low that when adjusted for price inflation, several of them have been actually negative. We should not be surprised if this is setting the stage for another serious economic crisis down the road.

Transparency, therefore, has little to do with being accountable to the political branches of government. It’s about allaying the concerns of the financial market in the face of accommodative monetary policy.

Did Janet Yellen,
(1) see any problem in the housing bubble,
(2) anticipate the bursting of the housing bubble; and,
(3) anticipate its implications for the U.S. economy?

The answers are (1) no, (2) no, and (3) no.