November 7th, 2011 — Books, economics
An excerpt of a book “What’s the economy for, Anyway"” was published in The Bloomberg’s Businessweek and sent to me by a friend:
It is a very good article that asks a lot of fundamental questions. Below is a listing of books and other material that is referenced from this article. Also included are works by Josef Pieper, a philosopher that explores the value of leisure.
March 28th, 2011 — economics
“The Fed has kept short-term interest rates near zero since December 2008 and has bought more than $2 trillion in long-term securities to push borrowing costs down further and boost recovery from the 2007-2009 recession.” (Fed unlikely to extend QE2, officials say by Ann Saphir (Reuters – 03/25/11)
The Federal Reserve was able to buy $2 trillion in long-term securities. This is amazing consider that GDP is right around $14 trillion (Google) and the 2010 US Federal Government is $2 trillion (wikipedia.org). Where does the Federal Reserve get that $2 trillion from? (From what I’ve read, it seems it just gets it out of thin air.) The ability to pump this amount of money into the economy is just extraordinary.
