Peter Jacobsen
Peter Jacobsen teaches economics and holds the position of Gwartney Professor of Economics. He received his graduate education at George Mason University.
Peter Jacobsen Articles
It’s the end of the year, and you know what that means. Like clockwork, Congress tries to push through a 1,500+ page spending bill with handouts and waste to “prevent a government shutdown.” The fact that this happens so frequently would...
This week for Ask an Economist, I have a question from Wilson. Wilson rightly notes the Federal Reserve targets an inflation rate of 2% and wants to know why. Why target increasing prices?
As the mess we have as our national debt climbs and interest on the debt becomes one of our biggest mandatory expenses, who do we pay interest to, and how do we pay it?
This week for Ask an Economist, I have a question from retired CPA, Nicholas G. He asks, “why is so much attention paid to the somewhat artificial and easily manipulated unemployment number instead of a "hard" number such as the number/...
I received an interesting follow up question from Heath B. He says, “This is a follow up question for the post you wrote about ‘Why Does the Federal Reserve Target 2% Inflation?’
This week I have a question from Eugene from Missouri about the Federal Reserve. He asks, “we often read that the Fed has a 2 percent inflation 'target'. Why is that? Why is inflation considered necessary at all? Would it be so bad if the...
After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), I received several questions related to the collapse. One by Dr. Michael Overfield caught my eye. He says: "The question I have is about fractional reserve banking. This is more in the news...
It’s been a few weeks since the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). In my previous article about the bank failure, I argued against a bailout of both investors and depositors. Regulators allowed investors to lose their lunch in the bank...
By now, you’ve likely heard about regulators closing down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and now Signature Bank as well. While I’m not going to go into all the details, the basic story is described well in this article on Seeking Alpha....
