Clark Center Forum

 

 

 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel poll statements:

A) If the US replaced its discretionary monetary policy regime with a gold standard, defining a "dollar" as a specific number of ounces of gold, the price-stability and employment outcomes would be better for the average American.

B) There are many factors besides US inflation risk that influence the current dollar price of gold. 

This week’s IGM Economic Experts Panel poll statement:

In general, using more congestion charges in crowded transportation networks — such as higher tolls during peak travel times in cities, and peak fees for airplane takeoff and landing slots — and using the proceeds to lower other taxes would make citizens on average better off. 

 

The Federal Reserve last week announced its new “Enhanced Prudential Standards and Early Remediation Requirements” for big banks, as required by the Dodd-Frank law. You have to pity the poor Fed because it faces an impossible task. The Fed’s proposal opens with an eloquent ode to the evils of too-big-to-fail and moral hazard. And then […] 

Europe is as full of bad ideas as it is of bad debts. Conventional wisdom says that sovereign defaults mean the end of the euro: If Greece defaults it has to leave the single currency; German taxpayers have to bail out southern governments to save the union. This is nonsense. U.S. states and local governments […] 

This week's IGM Economic Experts Panel poll statement:

A tax on the carbon content of fuels would be a less expensive way to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions than would a collection of policies such as “corporate average fuel economy” requirements for automobiles.