Scott Fullwiler and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray review the roles of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury in the context of quantitative easing, and find that the financial crisis has highlighted the limited oversight of Congress and the limited transparency of the Fed. And since a Fed promise...

In the context of the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis and the US subprime mortgage crisis, Senior Scholar Jan Kregel looks at the question of how we ought to distribute losses between borrowers and lenders in cases of debt resolution. Kregel tackles a prominent approach to this question that is...

Critics argue that the current crisis has exposed the profligacy of the Greek government and its citizens, who are stubbornly fighting proposed social spending cuts and refusing to live within their means. Yet Greece has one of the lowest per capita incomes in the European Union (EU), and its...

The global abatement of the inflationary climate of the past three decades, combined with continuing financial instability, helped to promote the worldwide holding of U.S. dollar reserves as a cushion against financial instability outside the United States, with the result that, for the United...

The purpose of the 1933 Banking Act--aka Glass-Steagall--was to prevent the exposure of commercial banks to the risks of investment banking and to ensure stability of the financial system. A proposed solution to the current financial crisis is to return to the basic tenets of this New Deal...

In this new brief, Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray examines the later works of Hyman P. Minsky, with a focus on Minsky’s general approach to financial institutions and policy. The New Deal reforms of the 1930s strengthened the financial system by separating investment banks from commercial...

In his State of the Union address President Obama acknowledged that "our most urgent task is job creation" - that a move toward full employment will lay the foundation for long-term economic growth and ensure that the federal government creates the necessary conditions for businesses to expand...

This brief by Yeva Nersisyan and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray argues that deficits do not burden future generations with debt, nor do they crowd out private spending. The authors base their conclusions on the premise that a sovereign nation with its own currency cannot become insolvent, and...

In this new policy brief, President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Research Scholar Greg Hannsgen evaluate the current path of fiscal deficits in the United States in the context of government debt and further spending, economic recovery, and unemployment. They are adamant that there is no...

Pension funds have taken a big hit during the current financial crisis, with losses in the trillions of dollars. In addition, both private and public pensions are experiencing significant funding shortfalls, as is the government-run Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which insures the...