Policy and Government

At Law & Liberty, Alberto Mingardi discusses the advent of the modern economy.

Monetary

Bob Samuelson, at the Washington Post, explains “negative” interest rates: “The theory is simple. If banks can’t be bribed to lend (through lower interest rates), maybe they can be coerced to lend through penalty payments on reserves. To escape the penalty fee, banks would lend out their reserves. This, it’s argued, would affect other interest rates and stimulate the economy. What’s crucial is that the negative rates on short-term debt spread to negative rates on longer-term bonds that have a larger effect on consumer and business borrowing. This already seems to be happening. At present, there are roughly $16 trillion of negative-yielding bonds out of a global bond market of about $113 trillion, reports the Institute of International Finance, an industry research and advocacy group.”

Tax

Grover Norquist pens a letter to Mitt Romney attacking his opposition to capital gains indexing.

Regulatory

Mark Jamison at AEIdeas discusses how State AGs are threatening to wreck the Internet.

“[R]ather than applaud the companies that make the internet great, 48 state attorneys general (AGs), plus AGs from Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, want to take US tech leaders down a few notches. Somewhere the EU and China are smiling.”

At BizPac Review, Stephen Moore says to get more renewable energy we need more rare earth minerals.

World

Bloomberg reports World Bank President David Malpass is forecasting a steeper slowdown of global economic growth.

Photo Credit: Franz Mahr