Federal Reserve

Archive for Federal Reserve

More Frank Talk From DeLong on NGDP Targeting

You know, I’ve had my differences with Brad DeLong–and I really can’t stand his habit of editing people’s comments–but he’s actually a straight shooter. Robert Waldmann had asked the entirely reasonable question, “Jan Hatsius (and Brad DeLong) argue that the Fed should declare its intention of buying whatever quantity it takes of long-term Treasuries to […]

Murphy Debate With Sumner in January

It’s on. (I was going to link to an Eazy-E video of the song with that title, but remembered that women and children read this blog.) We haven’t picked an official date yet, but Sumner and I will go toe-to-toe in January. The topic? Anthropogenic climate change. He’s for, I’m against. Or maybe we’ll talk […]

The House That Sumner Built

For those who don’t follow these things, Mugato would say Scott Sumner is so hot right now. Now even Krugman endorses Sumner’s general worldview. I was reading Brad DeLong’s take on the whole affair, and found this excerpt revealing: By contrast [with the Fed buying assets with new money], the alternative expansionary policy is for […]

Sumner Ups the Ante on the Hoax of the Decade

For a while now I have shared my theory that Scott Sumner, chief architect of the “target NGDP” proposal on the blogosphere, is actually playing a game with all of us. He has somehow managed to hoodwink not only Brad DeLong and Tyler Cowen but even David R. Henderson. Perhaps because of the metal plate […]

Quick Question for the MMTers

For those of you intrepid (foolish?) enough to wade through the comments on this blog, you will note that–contrary to perhaps your initial perception–the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) proponents do not actually say that the issuer of a fiat currency can’t become insolvent. Rather, they qualify it in the following way: To qualify for the […]

Krugman Bask on Bond Vigilantes

Krugman today yet again gives IS-LM all the credit for leading to his good predictions on interest rates. (I’m not being sarcastic; Krugman publicly was saying interest rates wouldn’t spike, when others were.) But I would like someone to show me where Krugman has actually used the IS-LM model to explain two different things: (A) […]

Sumner Plugs the Last Chink In His Inflationist Armor

I know many of you are probably getting sick of my obsession with econo-blogger Scott Sumner, but he is really something else. In previous posts I have shown that Sumner has explicitly declared that even if his policies lead to nothing but rising price inflation, he will have no regrets. Yesterday he made his views […]

Fiat Money and the Euro Crisis

My article today at Mises: Lost in all the analysis of the theory of “optimal currency area,” the possibilities for a structured default, the consequences of a collapse of the euro, etc., are two simple questions: Why does the behavior of the Greek government have anything to do with taxpayers in Germany? Why did the […]