There are several good reasons to believe that inflation is not an immediate risk to the U.S. economy and that the Federal Reserve would be ill-advised to exit prematurely from its easing policy.

No one knows whether there will be a 2012 farm bill, but we do know that it there is one, nutrition programs -- food stamps, school lunches, WIC, etc. -- will take up the lion’s share of farm bill funding, well in excess of $90 billion a year. But is the funding serving the neediest Americans? Find out on Thursday at AEI.

What if candidates actually debated during debates in the 2008 presidential campaign?

The Federal Reserve could give banks a big incentive to expand by setting negative interest rates on their excess reserves. 

Losing money is embarrassing. And an embarrassed Jamie Dimon publicly admitted that J.P. Morgan Chase goofed. Three senior executives lost their jobs as a result. But politicians and regulators in Washington are rushing to leverage the bank's misfortune for their own gain.

China is heading for a hard landing in 2012 or 2013 for three reasons: Excess capacity tied to overstimulation of investment in export industries and weak domestic demand growth, a bursting speculative bubble in its real estate sector, and a sharp slowdown in global growth.

What lessons on student loans can be learned from the searing national misadventure with mortgages?

If there is one conclusion that should be drawn from the boom in U.S. natural gas production, it is that supplies are so abundant that it makes economic sense to export some of our gas to countries overseas. No one could have imagined that possibility even a few years ago...