A Class Camping Trip Forget about monetary policy for a moment or two, and imagine, instead, that you're back in 6th grade. You and your classmates are about to go on a camping trip, involving some strenuous hiking, and lasting several days. Somehow, your teacher must see…
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…
The title of this post, apart from alluding to Milton Friedman’s famous quip about Keynesian economics, is the title of a recent speech by Klaas Knot, President of the Netherlands Bank. Answering his own question, Knot says, … Yes – as long as we stay eclectic, pragmatic…
On Thursday, November 12th, Cato hosts its 33rd Annual Monetary Conference. This year’s conference theme is “Rethinking Monetary Policy.” I will be presenting a paper on “Monetary Policy: The Knowledge Problem.” The knowledge problem in conducting monetary policy, or any other government policy, is that the required…
In its "Free Exchange" column, the Economist recently took up the issue of monetary rules. Provocatively titled “Rule It Out,” the column announced that “setting interest rates according to a fixed formula is a bad idea.” Reading the column one quickly learns the author doesn’t understand what…