The Pot Calls the Kettle Black
I had not planned to post anything today, but after coming across an article (“What the Fed Really Wants Is to Reduce Real Wages”) by Alex Pollock of AEI on Real Clear Markets this morning, I decided...
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More Economic Prejudice and High-Minded Sloganeering
I wasn’t planning to post today, but I just saw (courtesy of the New York Times) a classic example of the economic prejudice wrapped in high-minded sloganeering that I talked about yesterday. David...
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How not to Win Friends and Influence People
Last week David Beckworth and Ramesh Ponnuru wrote a very astute op-ed article in the New York Times explaining how the Fed was tightening its monetary policy in 2008 even as the economy was rapidly...
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Golden Misconceptions
The gold standard, as an international institution, existed for less than 40 years, emerging first, and by accident, in England, and more than a century and a half later, spreading by a rapid series of...
View ArticleMilton Friedman and How not to Think about the Gold Standard, France,...
Last week I listened to David Beckworth on his excellent podcast Macro Musings, interviewing Douglas Irwin. I don’t think I’ve ever met Doug, but we’ve been in touch a number of times via email. Doug...
View ArticleMilton Friedman’s Rabble-Rousing Case for Abolishing the Fed
I recently came across this excerpt from a longer interview of Milton Friedman conducted by Brian Lamb on Cspan in 1994. In this excerpt Lamb asks Friedman what he thinks of the Fed, and Friedman,...
View ArticleThe Real-Bills Doctrine, the Lender of Last Resort, and the Scope of Banking
Here is another section from my work in progress on the Smithian and Humean traditions in monetary economics. The discussion starts with a comparison of the negative view David Hume took toward banks...
View ArticleThe Hawley-Smoot Tariff and the Great Depression
The role of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff (aka Smoot-Hawley Tariff) in causing the Great Depression has been an ongoing subject of controversy for close to a century. Ron Batchelder and I wrote a paper...
View ArticleSic Transit Inflatio Mundi
Larry Summers continues to lead the charge for a quick, decisive tightening of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve to head off an inflationary surge that, he believes, is about to overtake us....
View ArticleWherein I Try to Calm Professor Blanchard’s Nerves
Olivier Blanchard is rightly counted among the most eminent macroeconomists of our time, and his pronouncements on macroeconomic matters should not be dismissed casually. So his commentary yesterday...
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