What can the Fed do about stagflation?

The NY Times had a nice article about the Fed's lack of options to fight stagflation and the hope the China's economy doesn't sputter and make things worse for the U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/business/economy/29norris.html

FOMC post-meeting press conference

In an effort to be ever-more transparent, Ben Bernanke gave his first ever, of many, press conference. He'll be giving press conferences after every FOMC meeting.

Here is a summary of what he said,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-usa-fed-bernanke-highlights-idUSTRE73Q6ZU20110427

Seminar: Lisa Giddings

The final department seminar for the 2010-11 season will be held next week. On Friday, April 29th, our own Lisa Giddings will present "Children, Family Size and Household Specialization: A Comparison of Different-Sex and Same-Sex Couples Using Matching Techniques." The seminar will be at 3:30 in room 230 Wimberly.

Central Banking Videos

The Federal Reserve has a lot of videos on its website about monetary policy and the federal reserve in general, and even information about recent news monetary policy actions.

Here is one short video about what the Federal Reserve is:
http://bcove.me/yq3ydto2

Here are all of the vidoes:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/media.htm

Inflation and U.S. Federal Government Debt

Here is short interesting article from the St. Louis Fed about the possibility that the Federal Reserve might "monetize" the U.S. debt.

Fiscal Policy and Expected Inflation

Seminar: Lee Lowenfish

The Economics Department, in cooperation with the university's Inclusive Excellence Initiative, will feature its next seminar speaker, Dr. Lee Lowenfish (Columbia University) for two presentations on Thursday, April 14th. The first is a brown bag lunch from 12:30-1:30 in Port O' Call in the Cartwright Center. The topic of discussion will be "Civil Rights in America." Dr. Lowenfish will be joined on a panel by Professor John Grider (History), Professor Alan Bigel (Political Science), and Charles Martin Stanley (Associate Dean CLS). Each panelist will make brief remarks before opening up the topic to discussion with audience members.

Thursday evening (April 14), at 7:30 pm in the Great Hall of the Cleary Center,Dr. Lowenfish will present a public lecture entitled "Conservative revolutionary: how Branch Rickey's signing of Jackie Robinson jump-started the modern civil rights movement."

Dr. Lowenfish received his PH.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1968. Among his numerous publications are four books, including his most recent: Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman, which will be available at both of his presentations.

Students are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to be a part of our inclusive excellence program.

Seminar: Robert Lemke

Our next department seminar will be next Friday, March 4, at 3:30 p.m. in room 230 Wimberly Hall. Professor Robert Lemke (Lake Forest College) will present "Explaining Game-to-Game Ticket Sales for Major League Baseball Games Over Time," research he is working on with some of his undergraduate students. Please encourage our upper division econ class students to attend.