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Posts Tagged ‘Treasury’

Playing Favorites in the Corporate Tax Code

Posted in Budget, Taxes, tagged , , , , on February 24, 2012 | 4 Comments »

The President’s new Framework for Business Tax Reform is two documents in one. The first diagnoses the many flaws in America’s business tax system, and the second offers a framework for fixing them. Much of the resulting commentary has focused on the policy recommendations. But I’d like to give a shout out to the diagnosis. [...]

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How Will Quantitative Tightening Work?

Posted in Macroeconomics, tagged , , on July 12, 2011 | 1 Comment »

The Fed’s second round of quantitative easing ended in late June. That means we are now in a period of quantitative accommodation. The Fed continues to hold a hefty portfolio of mortgage-backed securities and longer-term Treasuries — thus providing continued, unconventional monetary stimulus — but it’s not adding more. At the FOMC’s June 21-22 meeting, the [...]

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If QE2 Is Over, Does That Mean QA2 Just Started?

Posted in Macroeconomics, tagged , , on July 1, 2011 | 6 Comments »

Everyone has been writing epitaphs for the “end” of QE2, the Federal Reserve’s program to buy $600 billion in Treasury bonds. In a narrow sense, they are right: the Fed just completed those purchases. What most coverage misses, however, is that the effects of “quantitive easing” depend at least as much on the Fed’s owning [...]

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Playing with Fire with the Debt Limit

Posted in Budget, Finance, Politics, tagged , , , , on June 24, 2011 | 4 Comments »

My latest column in the Christian Science Monitor: America sometimes takes its exceptionalism too far. Case in point: We are the only major economy that talks openly of default. Government debt has ballooned throughout the developed world in the aftermath of the Great Recession. France and Britain are as deep in debt as the United States, [...]

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The Day the United States Defaulted on Treasury Bills

Posted in Budget, tagged , , , , on May 26, 2011 | 35 Comments »

Since the day of Alexander Hamilton, the United States has never defaulted on the federal debt. That’s what we budget-watchers always say. It’s a great talking point. One that helps bolster the argument that default should not be an option in Washington’s ongoing debt limit slowdown. There’s just one teensy problem: it isn’t true. As [...]

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Treasury Takes Step 1 in Avoiding the Debt Ceiling

Posted in Finance, tagged , , on January 27, 2011 | 3 Comments »

As expected, Treasury has announced that it will allow the $200 billion Supplemental Financing Program to run down to only $5 billion; that will save $195 billion of borrowing authority under the current debt ceiling: Treasury Issues Debt Management Guidance on the Supplementary Financing Program 1/27/2011 WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Assistant [...]

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