I wrote a piece for NRO that is up this morning describing why potential Republican presidential candidates should push for a monetary policy rule for the Federal Reserve.
For those NRO readers venturing to the blog, I would recommend these posts (in no particular order):
- The Stimulus Will Fail
- In Search of Monetary Stability
- Gold and Inflation, Again
- Money, the Money Multiplier, and Monetary Theory
- What Monetarism Really Wasn’t
- Is David Beckworth Crazy?
- Commodity Money, A Primer
- A Brief History of Monetary Disequilibrium
- Inflation is a Monetary Phenomenon, But This Isn’t Inflation
Josh
On topic: Lars Christensen did a guest post on my blog today and linked to his MM WP. (Link is at the very end of the post)
Let´s spread the “gospel”!
Marcus
http://thefaintofheart.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/market-monetarism-%E2%80%93-the-second-monetarist-counter-revolution-a-guest-post-by-lars-christensen/
Excellent piece in NRO. But why wait? Do NGDP now.
Thanks, Benjamin. I agree that they should do it now. In fact, I think they should have done it long ago. Nonetheless, the Fed doesn’t seem poised to undertake this on their own and the POTUS has largely punted on all issues pertaining to the Fed including filling empty seats on the Board of Governors. Republicans seem to want to hold the Fed accountable for its actions. A monetary policy rule does that.
Josh-
Ben Bernanke needs to take a page from Volcker and get bold. But will he?
As for the GOP, they will embrace QE and NGDP when Obama leaves office…..
Benjamin,
The WSJ editorial board has already endorsed the depreciation of the Swiss franc on the grounds of monetary disequilibrium, but fails to see how that applies to the U.S.
I’m not sure what to think about Bernanke. I think that he has done a better job than his detractors on the right seem to think. However, I think that he has failed miserably in maintaining the “monetary standard”, to use the language of Robert Hetzel, evident under Volcker and Greenspan.