Central banks have not merely inflated the bejesus out of assets prices. They have also caused the very foundations of financial markets to metastasize, yielding an endless array of new products that have no real economic function except to facilitate new forms of pure wagering.
President Joe Biden has picked Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to serve a second four-year term at the helm of the central bank, while nominating Lael Brainard, the only Democrat on the Fed’s seven-member board, to serve as second-in-command at the Fed.
Democrats persuade a slim majority to approve the centerpiece of President Biden’s economic agenda, though the bill now faces an evenly divided Senate.
Inflation outstripped forecasts and surged above 4 per cent last month to hit its highest level in almost a decade as spiralling energy prices pushed up the cost of living.
