Harvard economics professor Martin Feldstein said he sees an increased risk that stock prices will decline sharply, and push down GDP growth. Feldstein, in a Thursday speech to the libertarian Cato Institute, said the fragile financial system is the result of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive bond buying in the wake of the financial crisis. He called on the Fed to tighten monetary policy swiftly, bringing the fed funds rate up to 4% by the end of 2019 from just over 1% now. Feldstein said that former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke “was right” when he warned excessive risk-taking was a side effect of bond purchases and the ... (full story)