How Nearly Two Decades Of Fed Policy Contributed To Bubbles, Busts, And A Boom In Debt

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Every week, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway take you on a not-so-random walk through hot topics in markets, finance, and economics.

Many people like to claim that the Federal Reserve is responsible for the high degree of leverage and speculation in the economy. But the mechanism via which this happens is often misunderstood. On this week's episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Srinivas Thiruvadanthai of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center about how the Fed's goal of inflation targeting contributed to a massive buildup in private debt. As he explains, the approach to minimizing the volatility of inflation at a low level created a perfect environment for lenders, creating all kinds of other risks elsewhere in the economy.

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