Edward J. Strafaci ~ Academic Blog

Robert Stauffer: The Fed's Mismeasure of Inflation     The 2% target rate has been reached in services, but monetary policy will do little to raise goods prices. While the Federal Reserve approved a small increase in its target interest rate in mid-December, last week the Federal Open Market Committee voted against any further rate hike. The Fed’s press release noted that inflation remained below 2%—and the minutes of the December FOMC meeting indicate that some members are still very concerned over the low rate of inflation. This guarantees that decisions to further hike rates will be contentious and slow. But concerns about too-low inflation are misguided. The Fed needs to recognize that its power to increase the rate of inflation is significantly limited. Specifically, it needs to carefully consider the factors of supply that are restraining price increases in the markets for goods—as opposed to services, which are more sensitive to monetary policy and where inflati...

The key to this famous commercial is how these amateur actors portray the indelible affection between a mother and son...priceless! Edward Strafaci From Juliet to Alice Kramden, women have communed from their upper-story windows, but few ever reached a wider audience with as mundane a message as Mary Fiumara. In an indelible long-running  television commercial  first broadcast in 1969, Mrs. Fiumara, playing a devoted, robust and aproned mother, convincingly hollers “Anthony! Anthony!” from a second-floor tenement window in the Italian North End of Boston to summon home her 12-year-old son from blocks away for a hearty serving of Prince spaghetti. To get there, Anthony, in short pants and sneakers, wends his way through a crowded street market, races up the stairs and arrives out of breath but, like his welcoming mother, smiling. Mrs. Fiumara (pronounced few-MAH-ruh) died on Tuesday. She was 88 and had lived in the North End since she was a teenager. Her death was confirmed b...