FOMC

(US GOVERNMENT) Federal Open Market Committee; a committee whose members include the 7 governors of the Federal Reserve Board plus five presidents of the Federal Reverse Banks (there are 12 district banks). The FOMC is responsible for open market operations of the Federal Reserve System.
The FOMC manages purchases and sales of Treasury securities.
by Abu Yahya June 17, 2010
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(ECONOMICS) the administrative committee of the Federal Reserve System that actually administers monetary policy. There are 12 members of the FOMC.

The 12 members include all seven governors of the Federal Reserve Board (FRB).

In addition, representatives of each Federal Reserve Bank are eligible to serve on the FOMC. The FOMC implements sales/purchases of treasury securities (open market operations) in order to create credit at member banks. This is the process by which banks with FRS membership can create money. The difficulty of open market operations lies in ensuring that rates for short term securities remain lower than those for long term securities. Otherwise, monetary tightening cannot succeed in curbing inflation.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (2nd FRB) is by far the most important of the 12 district banks. Historically, its president has often gone on to become either chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, or else Secretary of the Treasury (as, for example, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner). Nearly all bank holding companies have subsidiaries in the 2nd District, and the 2nd District is uniquely guaranteed a seat on the FOMC. The other 11 rotate, with 4 taking a turn of the FOMC at any given time.
The Federal Open Market Committee conducts transactions in treasury securities at the Open Market Window.
by Abu Yahya May 05, 2010
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curmudgeon's fallacy

The idea that, if you mitigate the consequences of a particular type of accident, then that type of accident will necessarily occur much more frequently, more than negating the initial benefit.

The CF assumes that human nature is perverse and seeks to equalize consequences. Hence, improved automotive technologies such as air bags, ABS, space frames, etc. will be offset (or more than offset) by careless driving, leading to increased highway fatalities.

FALSIFICATION: Empirical evidence shows that, while reducing consequences increases risky behavior, overall safety/health outcomes are better. Insurance companies with a stake in reducing claims verify this.

More generally, the CF confuses all forms of risk-taking, such as faster highway speeds, with fecklessness. Increased speed and convenience (for motorists) has utility; and there is no principle in welfare economics that says risk-taking will increase by an amount sufficient to offset the safety measures.
The massively overrated book *Freakanomics* (Dubner & Leavitt) includes many examples of the curmudgeon's fallacy.
by Abu Yahya October 16, 2008
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foreign factor income

in economics, the net income from assets that are owned by foreigners. The citizens of a country will own assets that are physically located overseas (for example, real estate in another country, shares of foreign stock, or even labor performed while an expatriate), and those assets earn income. At the same time, foreigners likewise earn income on assets located in ones' own country.

If domestically-owned assets located abroad earn more income than domestic assets owned by foreigners, then there will be a net flow of income from overseas. This is a collateral benefit to running a trade surplus, especially over several years.

An example might be the United Kingdom (UK) during the 19th century. Prior to the 1880's, the UK exported far more than it imported. With the foreign money, it bought assets in the economies of other countries, such as the USA, Continental Europe, and the future Commonwealth of Nations. These assets naturally earned a lot of income, as they accumulated over many decades. The income from these assets was so large that, after the 1880's, the UK ran a trade deficit but still had a current account surplus.


In the case of the UK, the current account surplus from the NFFI was still large enough that the UK could continue to buy foreign assets that earned income, even as its trade deficit grew during the early 20th century.
Gross national product (GNP) is gross domstic product (GDP) minus net foreign factor income (NFFI).
by Abu Yahya February 14, 2009
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Underwriter

(FINANCE) a person or entity that lends money to someone else by creating securities and selling them. In commercial milieux, this is investment banking, and the most famous investment bank is Goldman Sachs. Another major investment bank is Morgan Stanley.

Most major countries have a ministry of the treasury, or ministry of finance, that issues bonds for the government and is responsible for selling them to raise money for government borrowing. These are treasury securities.
Peter Warburg was an underwriter who helped "design" the Usonian federal reserve system.
by Abu Yahya May 05, 2010
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classical economics

*noun*; generic term for economic thought developed from 1776 to 1930, which assumed the following basic concepts:
1. all types of goods, including factors of production, can be efficiently traded in markets;
2. given free markets, all goods available for purchase will, in fact, be purchased (including labor);
3. free markets include unlimited ability of prices of commodities to move upwards or downward to ensure the quantity supplied matches the quantity demanded.

*Subdivisions*
Adam Smith (1723-1790), auther of *The Wealth of Nations* (1776) is usually credited with compiling the critical ideas into a single theory.

Some historians regard the classical era as really beginning after 1817, with the work of David Ricardo (1772-1823) and Nassau Senior (1790-1864). Ricardo and David developed the concept of diminishing marginal utility to explain the idea of factor cost, and ultimately, market equilibrium.

After 1870, however, classical economics experienced the marginal revolution, in which the field adopted a much more systematic approach to addressing major research questions.

As a result of the Great Depression (1929-1939), classical economics generally faded from view until the late 1970's. At this time, the rational expectations hypothesis and real business cycle theory were refined in order to address problems that had crippled classical economics in the 1920's.

Textbooks addressing classical economic research since 1964 usually call it "New Classical economics." From 1982 to 2006, nearly all Nobel prizes in economics were awarded to New Classical economics such as
George Stigler, Ronald Coase, Robert Lucas Jr., Edward Prescott, and Edmund Phelps.
Proponents of classical economics are nearly always extremely conservative in their political views, and usually conclude that the sole legitimate role of the state is to defend property rights.
by Abu Yahya March 03, 2009
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U-6

(ECONOMICS) Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force. Put another way, U-6 = U-3 (headline unemployment) + discouraged workers + part-time workers in need of full-time jobs.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics regularly publishes six estimates of unemployment. The others are U-1, U-2, U-3, U-4, and U-5. Eurostat publishes one monthly estimate of unemployment for the European Union, which is approximately midway between U-3 and U-4.

The unemployment statistics for the USA are collected through a monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) (also known as the household survey) and an establishment survey.
U-6 is often referred to as "real unemployment" because it attempts to measure the total number of people who would like to have more work than they do have. Some have argued that U-6 is closer to historic measures of unemployment than U-3 is (we didn't have either during the Great Depression).
by Abu Yahya July 15, 2010
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