‘Jobs Created or Saved’ Is White House Fantasy: Caroline Baum Heresy, thy name is Christina Romer.

If Government Pays Us to Spend, Then Spend We Will: Caroline Baum The recession is over. Yea verily yea, as the knights of old might say with chalice raised.

Bible Teaches That Banks Can’t Serve Two Masters: Caroline Baum Taxpayers may despise Wall Street’s culture of greed, view bankers as amoral and abhor the idea of government bailouts. What they really can’t stand is watching the bailed-out banks throw their new-found wealth at their employees without getting a piece of the action.

Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market, Led a Soap-Opera Life: Review The Panic of 2008 was bad for the economy, good for advocates of big government and great for Ayn Rand, philosopher, novelist and high priestess of individualism, who died in 1982.

Bernanke Frets Over Sherlock Holmes’s Next Stop: Caroline Baum Federal Reserve policy makers like to explain the world in terms of feedback loops, except those of their own making.

Treasury Bond Rally Fails the Asset-Bubble Test: Caroline Baum Bubble sightings are proliferating by the day, and with interest rates near zero, it’s not hard to understand why. Easy money leads to excess credit creation, which eventually produces inflation in goods and services prices or some type of asset bubble.

What Central Bankers Say When They Mean ‘Awful’: Caroline Baum Everywhere you look, there’s uncertainty.

Fed Needs Goldilocks for Roach Motel Check-Out: Caroline Baum If only the moderator had called on me, I might have gotten an answer to my questions and left with more confidence in the Federal Reserve’s ability to pull off its exit strategy without a hitch.

Bond Traders Are Doubters, Lemmings or Sissies: Caroline Baum I’ve been watching the bond market recently, but frankly there hasn’t been much to see. Treasury yields ebb and flow in the narrowest of ranges, with an occasional hiccup to break the monotony, seemingly immune to economic news or what’s going on in other markets.

Fed’s Focus on Exit Ignores Unguarded Entrance: Caroline Baum In an effort to determine what went wrong and enshrine “never again” as their motto, central bankers are focusing on what they did, or didn’t do, in their role as regulators to aid and abet the financial crisis.