The Bitcoin Baby and Ben Bernanke: Digital Currency’s Dark Side

The rise of the Bitcoin has the financial world alternately cheering and groaning. Though at first the creation of a wholly digital currency seemed little more than an online novelty, the Bitcoin has spread its wings in ways both bad and good. The birth of the first...

The End of the Bond Buyup: Why It Matters

After months of maybe yes, maybe no, the Federal Reserve has made it official: its large-scale buyup of mortgage backed securities and other commodities is coming to an end. And while that won’t happen until 2014, the news has sent shock waves through markets around...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Zombie Stocks on a Roll

The rollercoaster ride of quasi-federal mortgage lending superagencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hit the down slope after an unprecedented climb that saw stock prices for both these institutions gaining up to 150 percent in previous weeks. Now, as stocks fell by as...

Employment Outlook Affects the Fed’s Bond Buyup

Over $3 trillion and counting. That’s the total so far of the Federal Reserve’s buyup of mortgage security bonds – a number that, as we discussed in a recent post, is raising alarms among senior representatives of regional Federal Reserve banks. Now, in another twist...