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An Incredibly Misguided Nomination for Comptroller of the Currency
The Biden administration has certainly made the most misguided nomination for Comptroller of the Currency in history with its nominee, Saule Omarova. Professor Omarova has published proposals displaying deep ideological commitments which make her obviously unacceptable for this key responsibility in the banking system. Even after this has become apparent, the Biden administration has very surprisingly not withdrawn her name and a Senate Banking Committee hearing on the nomination has been scheduled for this week, November 18.
Risk, Uncertainty and Profit 100 Years Later
The year 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of Frank Knight’s great book, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (RU&P), which established uncertainty as a fundamental idea in economics and finance, and as a key to understanding enterprise, entrepreneurship, cycles of booms and busts, and economic growth. Viewed from the present, it also explains why faith in economic management by central banks will be disappointed, and why any idea that economies or financial markets are governed by “mechanisms” is deluded. Its ideas open the way to seeing that economies and financial markets are a different kind of reality than are machines, and thus why the econometric equations that seem so plausible in some times, at other times fail.
Since 2008, Monetary Policy Has Cost American Savers about $4 Trillion
With inflation running at over 6 percent and interest rates on savings near zero, the Federal Reserve is delivering a negative 6 percent real (inflation-adjusted) return on trillions of dollars in savings. This is effectively expropriating American savers’ nest eggs at the rate of 6 percent a year. It is not only a problem in 2021, however, but an ongoing monetary policy problem of long standing. The Fed has been delivering negative real returns on savings for more than a decade. It should be discussing with the legislature what it thinks about this outcome and its impacts on savers.
Let Me Vote Those Shares for You
BlackRock’s idea to give institutional clients more control over how shares of stock are voted could be a good step. Some, such as Alex Pollock, say that it is still a ladder with the first rung above the head of most investors.