The long boom was not without its bust cycles, but during this 20 year period of general economic expansion, they were fairly short and fairly shallow. ———————————— This post is part of a larger series and sub-series. Here is a

While most people think of neoliberalism as having started in the late 1970s or early 1980s, its roots go back to the end of world war I, when the idea of the modern nation-state took over from the prior era

The great inflation of the 1970s actually started around 1965 as the chart below shows. And believe it or not, the consensus on what caused it is not as strong as I used to think. Of all the economic and

The Fed-Treasury Accord of 1951 was a bank regulation that created what we refer to as the independence of the Fed. We say this because compared to what was before, it made the Fed independent of the Treasury. A little

When World War 2 came to an end, the Federal Reserve had a dual mandate to 1) keep the interest rates on government securities low as desired by the Treasury which paid that interest rate, and 2) target a low

I know new world order has become a loaded phrase these days with ideas of the great reset, etc, but I don’t have a better phrase to describe what the Bretton Woods Agreement did in July of 1944. The institutions

The bank regulations that changed in the United States to help pay for world war two almost exclusively affected operations of the Federal Reserve, which makes sense when you consider that the war was managed by the federal government, and

How big was the problem? The economic impact of the great depression is illustrated by the two charts below. The first shows the US GDP with the depression time period shadowed in pink and the second shows the US unemployment

In what ways did bank regulation lead to the great depression? In what ways did bank regulation change as a result OF the great depression? Many financial crises are caused by debts that can’t be paid, at an enormous scale,

Financing world war one started simply, as people expected the war to be quick. As months dragged on, things got more complex. The United States was neutral during the first two years of the war, from 1914 to 1916, and

After the US government created a national currency in 1863, the US dollar (also known as the greenback) the banking system of the United States had one currency with decentralized payment clearing and a decentralized system of “lender of last

Much has been written about the Federal Reserve, and much will be in the future. Was it an innovation to stabilize the financial system? A way for bankers to “skim off the top” every time the US government adds more

Bank regulation and the creation of greenbacks… The US free banking era started in 1837 when the second Bank of the United States dissolved after Congress failed to renew its charter. While the Bank of the United States was not

Prior to the dissolution of the second Bank of the United States (due to Congress not renewing its charter in 1836), bank regulation for state banks was lax, and afterwards, it stayed so, for quite a while. Between 1829 and

Early in the history of the United States, bank regulations were created for the existence of a national central bank. This was actually tried twice, and both times, for political reasons, the banks were shut down. Alexander Hamilton because the

How did bank regulation allow the United States to fund the rest of the War of Independence? Robert Morris was appointed Superintendent of Finance of the United States in May of 1781, about two months after the Articles of Confederation

When the American colonies were British, each colony issued their own currency, denominated in the British currency units: pounds, shillings, and pence. The values of each currency varied between colonies. A pound issued in Massachusetts for example was not equivalent

Bank regulation in the United States was never designed from a big picture perspective. Rather, a problem was identified and solved. This generally created more problems. Which were identified and solved. Which created more problems. Which were identified and solved.

This blog follows my interests in learning about money, banking, economics, supply chains, etc. This interest started a few years ago when I was made aware, by an anthropologist (David Graeber), that a foundational belief about money, is not based

If this concept is new to you, the first question is what is a federal reserve repo? Federal reserve repo means Fed “repurchase agreement” A Federal Reserve repo is a repurchase agreement which is a short-term loan whose collateral is