Author: Joseph Salerno

A new survey by American Express reveals that 29 percent of Americans keep at least some of their “savings” in cash.  Overall 53 percent of cash holders stash their cash in a domestic hiding place.  Surprisingly, 67 percent of dollar bill and coin hoarders among the millennial generation secrete cash around their domicile.  A 2012 Marist College survey indicated the most preferred places in (or under) which to hide cash.  In order of popularity, they are:  the freezer; a sock drawer;  the mattress; and a cookie jar. Cash hoarding surged during the financial crisis in 2008 and an upward trend … Continue reading →

There has been much hand wringing among popular blogger-economists in response to the breaking of the Euro peg by the SNB. Tyler Cowen, Paul Krugman, and Scott Sumner all lament the loss of “credibility” by the SNB in the wake of its sudden change of policy regime and they darkly hint at dire consequences for the Swiss economy. But the problem with central banks is not credibility, or lack thereof. The Greenspan-Bernanke Fed and other central banks surely lost all credibility over the last 20 years by unwittingly unleashing asset price inflation on the world during the “New Economy” era of late 1990s … Continue reading →