Back in July, I shared here some thoughts concerning the Fed's conference in Chicago that month, which was dedicated to a review of its tools, strategies, and communications. Among other things, I said I was disappointed by the short-shrift given to NGDP targeting by Lars Svensson's paper…
Several days ago a colleague of mine, referring to the Niskanen Center's recent conspectus, wondered whether Bill Niskanen, the former Chairman of the Cato Institute after whom the Niskanen Center is named, would have agreed with a claim it made. The claim was that promoting sound monetary…
At next week’s FOMC meeting, the state of the labor market will play a key role in policy deliberations. But there’s a lot more going on underneath top line unemployment numbers that make them a bad tool for monetary policy decision-making. The May employment report is a…
The Cato Institute recently released Monetary Alternatives: Rethinking Government Fiat Money, a collection of essays 30 years in the making. As George Selgin explains in the foreword, The complacency wrought by the Great Moderation, not to mention the limited interest in fundamental monetary reform before then, resulted…
I have chosen a provocative title, but it is fully justified. Fed officials are flying on autopilot, but the controls don’t work anymore, or at least not reliably. Fed watchers are largely clueless. The investment community and the economy may be collateral damage. Let me begin by…