Two or three Federal Reserve interest rate increases this year would be "reasonable," but the central bank will continue to watch economic data, San Francisco Fed President John Williams said Thursday.

Noted U.S. economist John Taylor, author of the economic rule prescribing interest rates as a function of inflation and employment, is presenting an argument Thursday for wider use of rules-based monetary policy in central banks around the world.

Gigantic government’s complexity and opacity provide innumerable opportunities for opportunists to act unconstrained by clear law or effective supervision. Today’s example, involving the government’s expropriation of hundreds of billions of dollars, features three sets of unsympathetic actors -- a grasping federal government, a few hedge funds nimble at exploiting the co-mingling of government and the private sector, and two anomalous institutions that should never have existed.

Eighteen months after Rahm Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff, became mayor of Chicago, he addressed a news conference about his priorities.