Schizophrenic security markets are reflecting the Federal Reserve’s dilemma. It’s torn between reducing and eventually eliminating its ongoing additions to huge excess member-bank reserves and supporting what it sees as a still fragile economy with unacceptably high unemployment.

With trillion-dollar federal deficits and gridlock in Washington, further fiscal stimulus is off the table. So monetary easing is the only game in town. And with the federal funds rate already at zero, it’s left to quantitative easing.

When the Fed buys securities, its payments add to bank reserves, which can then be lent and re-lent in the fractional reserve system. As a result, in normal times each extra dollar in reserves results in $79.50 more in M2 money. But with banks reluctant to lend and creditworthy borrowers eschewing new loans, each new dollar in reserves has boosted M2 by only $1.40 since August 2008, when massive central bank easing began.

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NPR, which has suffered a succession of leadership changes over the better part of a decade, needs a new chief executive again.

Gary E. Knell, the public radio organization’s chief for the last 20 months, announced on Monday that he would be leaving to run the National Geographic Society. It came as an unwelcome surprise to NPR staff members, given that Mr. Knell brought some desperately needed stability to the executive ranks when he was hired in late 2011.

Conflicts between past chief executives and the NPR board resulted in repeated shake-ups in the years leading to his arrival. On Monday, though, Mr. Knell and the board hurried to reassure public radio fans that his exit was because of something more mundane: a better job offer.

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Companies seeking influence need to be careful they don't network themselves into bribery investigations.

An inquiry by U.S. securities regulators into whether J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. hired the children of some Chinese officials to win business is a fresh reminder of the risks around the practice of giving jobs to the well connected.

The Justice Department has warned companies since at least the 1980s about hiring practices that appear to be attempts to curry favor with officials. In recent years, the U.S. has pursued several companies, including Tyson Foods Inc. and Daimler AG, for hiring relatives of foreign officials ...

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