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The Fed: Quantitative easing has its limits

The Federal Reserve’s grand experiment in stimulating the economy with massive bond purchases has fizzled, said Binyamin Appelbaum in The New York Times. A “broad range of economists” agree that QE2, as the Fed’s second exercise in so-called quantitative easing is known, “has pumped up the stock market, reduced the cost of American exports, and allowed companies to borrow money at lower interest rates.” But the program, launched last summer as the recovery was beginning to lose steam, has done little to spur hiring or reduce the cost of mortgages or consumer loans. “It’s good for stopping the fall,” said University of Oregon economics professor Mark Thoma, “but for actually turning things around and driving the recovery, I just don’t think monetary policy has that power.”

“Extraordinary though QE2 might’ve been, it wasn’t extraordinary enough,” said Ezra Klein in WashingtonPost.com. In that sense, “QE2 echoes the story behind the stimulus—and much else that we’ve tried since the financial collapse.” With its goal of $600 billion in bond purchases, the Fed’s buying binge was “underpowered” and wound up discrediting the whole theory behind quantitative easing.

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Crisis fallout: A financial crook is convicted

Lee Farkas, who built Florida-based Taylor, Bean & Whitaker into the nation’s second-largest mortgage lender, last week became one of the few financial executives to be convicted for his part in the financial crisis, said Jon Prior in HousingWire.com. Farkas was found guilty on 14 counts of fraud for concealing bank overdrafts, selling nonexistent mortgage loans to government finance companies, and misappropriating funds. According to court testimony, Farkas ordered the sale of nonexistent mortgages to the Federal National Mortgage Association to raise operating funds. Sentencing is scheduled for July 1.

Toys: Mattel loses its rights to Bratz dolls

Mattel has been dealt a stinging blow in its long-running dispute over ownership of the Bratz line of dolls, said Vik Jolly in the Orange County, Calif., Register. A federal jury ruled that Mattel “willfully and maliciously” misappropriated trade secrets belonging to upstart toymaker MGA Entertainment and awarded MGA $88.4 million. A former Mattel designer created the dolls on his own time, the court ruled, contrary to Mattel’s contention that anything the designer did while in Mattel’s employ belonged to the company. Mattel is expected to appeal.

Computing: Amazon gets lost in the cloud

Prominent clients of Amazon’s cloud-computing services suffered “visible performance issues” last week after technical problems crippled its Northern Virginia data center, said R. “Ray” Wang in Forbes.com. FourSquare, HootSuite, Reddit, and Quora were among the websites renting data-processing and -storage services from Amazon that suffered slowdowns or went down altogether. Though all are now running normally, the incident “has shaken the confidence of some executives in public cloud computing.”

Labor: NLRB targets Boeing in South Carolina

The National Labor Relations Board has filed a complaint against Boeing for its plans to open a new, nonunion plant in South Carolina to build its 787 aircraft. The NLRB claims that the airplane maker was illegally retaliating against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers for a 2008 strike at Boeing’s Seattle plant, said Wes Barrett in FoxNews.com. Boeing executives vowed to “vigorously contest” the complaint. The assembly facility is expected to open this summer as the legal process gets underway.