Ryan Avent

Yesterday the Federal Reserve announced it was buying $600 billion dollars in Treasury Bonds. We’ll find out why and what else is currently on the Fed’s swelling balance sheet on today’s Backstory segment. We’ll speak with Ryan Avent, online economics editor for The Economist.

James Fallows, National Correspondent for The Atlantic, and Ryan Avent, online economics editor for The Economist, look at how then U.S. midterms are playing around the world and at how the election could affect a number of global policy concerns: from the debate over China’s valuation of its currency, to EU austerity measures, to the prospects for an arms reduction treaty with Russia.