Plain Sense Economics

Was it Popeye’s friend, Wimpy, who kept asking for a hamburger on credit? Today’s credit markets are anything but robust, with reduced demand and supply for borrowed funds. Always eager to find obscure terms for modern dilemmas, economists refer to this condition as a liquidity trap. With a little prodding from Facebook friend and neighbor, [...]

Just a quick update on my previous post – about the Greece debt crisis.
Pundits and observers, who are no smarter than you or me, are assuming that Greece will default on its sovereign debt. This is as if the United States decided not to pay off our U.S. bonds one day.
To avoid a total market [...]

So, who cares about the Greek debt crisis? It’s a small country, a long ways away.
Answers:
Greece as a Country: “We care!”
The Euro currency countries: “We care!”
Europe Generally: “We care!”
U.S. and International Financial Community: “We care!”
Stock Investors: “We care!”
All right, already.  Here’s why they care.
The background
Through a series of missteps over the last 10 years the [...]

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was created in 1933 as a depression-era effort to restore the public’s faith in banks and banking. The early years of the depression were marked by numerous bank failures and runs on even healthy banks. After taking office President Roosevelt declared a bank holiday to give regulators a chance [...]

“If the Federal Reserve is printing all these billions and trillions of dollars, won’t we suffer from inflation?”
I get asked this question a lot lately. First, despite the inference of the video provided by the Bureau and Engraving and Printing (see below), the Fed has not been running the money printing presses for extra shifts [...]

My head’s spinning with all of the once-in-a-lifetime monetary policy and other government action going on. Even so, this is a good moment to stop and review, in simple terms, what kind of problems the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department are dealing with and what steps they are taking. …very simple terms…
Liquidity / [...]