By Robert Romano One of mainstays in the postwar economy, and in particular, the post-gold standard economy after 1971 has been the dollar’s unchallenged status as the world’s reserve currency. It has been called the exorbitant privilege . At the time, as the story goes, to help resolve to the 1973 oil shock, Richard Nixon convinced Saudi Arabia to only accept dollars for payment of oil in return for protecting […]

By Robert Romano “This is what happens when prices go up, it’s elementary.” That was Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” explaining how if home prices rise too fast, it can have an adverse impact on home sales as they become increasingly unaffordable. And then, it eventually impacts on home […]

By Robert Romano Pimco CEO Bill Gross has left the company he founded, the largest bond fund in the world with over $2 trillion in assets under management, and that has everyone wondering what’s next for interest rates. Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdle has an interesting pieced entitled , “Gross gets out of bonds just in time,” […]

By Robert Romano The Federal Reserve’s tapering of quantitative easing continues, dropping from $25 billion a month of securities to $15 billion, according to the central bank’s latest statement . Since August 2007 when the financial crisis began, the Fed has dramatically expanded its balance sheet by $3.5 trillion, from $907.5 billion to $4.493 trillion . Today’s total […]

By Robert Romano “I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing.” That was then-Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) in […]

By Robert Romano Household debt has outpaced household median income for almost 40 years, and we’re paying the price, the latest figures from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Census show. While median income for households grew by $929 to $51,939 in 2013, the amount of debt per household remained elevated at $106,921. […]

By Robert Romano By now, the causes of the mortgage crisis that nearly wrecked the global economy in 2007 and 2008 are common knowledge. Too many high risk loans were made, too much credit boosted housing prices to the moon, too much leverage was taken on by […]

The full version of this story originally appeared  on TheHill.com, linked below. By Rick Manning It is not all that surprising that a retiring Senate Committee chairman would be grasping in the last days in power for one last legacy achievement, but it is shocking when the […]

By Robert Romano On June 22, Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace asked newly minted House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) if he “would allow the Ex-Im Bank to expire in September?” “Yes, because it’s something the private sector can be able to do,” McCarthy said at the time. Ahead of the June 18 House leadership elections necessitated by the defeat of former Majority […]

By Robert Romano “If the government has no place insuring export loans, then surely it also has no place providing subsidized crop insurance to farmers…” That was Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein, commenting on the imminent demise of the Export Import Bank of the United States, a […]