Author: Kevin Carney

I'm a total amateur. Not an economist, not a finance person, not a supply chain planner (but I did previously work for two logistics companies in IT capacities). Some years ago, the anthropologist David Graeber, in a Talks at Google lecture about his book Debt: The First 5000 Years, led me to realize that what I understood to be true about what money is, how it works, where it comes from, etc., is simply not true. Since then, I've read books, listened to podcasts, watched lectures, and started following economists on social media. I even have favorite economists, which is maybe the nerdiest phrase I've ever written. As I learned more, I wanted a place to keep notes. Hence, this website.

Congressional Hearing: The Implications of a Central Bank Digital Currency and Private Sector Alternative

Here is a video of a hearing of the Congressional Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology and Inclusion, help on 14 Sep 2023, on the idea that the US should, or should not, pursue the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency. The first 26:22 of the video is waiting for the hearing to start. […]

USA Bank Regulation: 1980 to 2000: The Long Boom

Graph of the US GDP growth from 1980 to 2020

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 link to the series: The history of banks and banking regulation and to the sub-series: United States […]

USA Bank Regulation: 1980: Neoliberalism

Image of Fredrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher

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 of empires. The idea was further solidified as world war II was coming to an […]

USA Bank Regulation: 1970: The Great Inflation

Image of a chart showing The Great Inflation of the 1970s

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 banking topics I’ve researched so far, I’ve found more papers on this topic than any […]

USA Bank Regulation: 1951: After the Accord

An image of a slide showing Fed management of the economy after the Fed-Treasury Accord of 1951

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 background Working under the belief that currency-issuing governments actually borrow the currency they issue, the […]

USA Bank Regulation: 1951: Treasury-Fed Accord

Image of Marriner Eccles, the Fed chairman who negotiated the Fed-Treasury accord of 1951 on behalf of the Fed

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 inflation rate. This was a bank regulation that created a dual mandate problem. The dual […]

USA Bank Regulation: 1944: New World Order

Image of logos of the IMF and the World Bank

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 and policies reshaped the global financial system and continue to be the foundation of what […]

USA Bank Regulation: 1941: World War Two

Image of "Women Support War Effort" stamp.

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 that’s where they bank. The government saw a need to provide A LOT of cash, […]

USA Bank Regulation: 1933: The New Deal

Images representing the new deal of President Roosevelt

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 rate with the depression time period shadowed in blue. These graphs illustrate why the new […]

USA Bank Regulation: 1929: The Great Depression

The famous image of the woman with two children taken during the great depression

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, which causes the inability to meet payment obligations to ripple through a financial system, which […]