George Melloan’s “The Fed’s Asset-Inflation Machine” in today’s Wall Street Journal, while not mentioning Austrian economics, provides some very Austrian sounding analysis of the impact of Fed policy, both current and past on the economy.
Some highlights:
But laws that restrict or stipulate the terms of voluntary employment contracts stifle economic progress and make life harder for everyone—even those for whom the laws were designed to aid.
The controversy over whether the Federal Government should ban the possession by citizens of certain types, or all types, of firearms has been raging back and forth for a very long time. I remember as a child seeing news coverage of horrific acts of violence involving firearms. I also remember the seemingly interminable “national conversation” that inevitably followed these events. It seemed, and still seems, to rouse people’s emotions in a way that few other issues do. My parents, like most of their friends, firmly supported gun-control legislation, which meant that I did as well.
Last week the FOMC announced that it would continue unchanged its policies of open-ended quantitative easing to the tune of $85 billion per month and targeting a zero interest rate for as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5 percent and (CPI) inflation does not exceed 2.5 percent.
The Economist has a new report out on the Nordic countries naming them the model for how other nations can return their economies to prosperity.
Nearly a decade ago, poker exploded in popularity. Between television programming, media coverage, and pop culture references to it — in particular, the Texas Hold ‘Em variant — the game became virtually unavoidable.
Ken Rogoff is not too impressed with the Fed’s critics. Restricting the Fed’s activities, or “worse” — I guess he means scrapping the Fed altogether — is “nonsense,” and “to single out Fed governors for missing the coming catastrophe is ludicrous.” He concedes that the Fed made some egregious mistakes leading up to the financial crisis (he doesn’t see credit expansion per se as playing any role), but argues that no one else saw it coming either.
In today’s column on “Money, Wealth, and Models,” Paul Krugman lashes out “the Austrianish horde” for being critical of his view “that you can create real wealth by printing more pieces of paper.” He is addressing Hans Hoppe’s critique of Krugman that as a society you cannot turn pieces of paper into wealth, but not by name.
