In my prior post, “The Futility of Stimulus,” I examined whether Federal Reserve Policy has provided economic stimulus. I employed standard measures of money-supply growth to evaluate the question. I concluded that Federal Reserve policy has resulted in less expansion of the money supply than would normally…
George Selgin has recently focused on the failure of Federal Reserve policy to finance a normal recovery. The Fed has greatly expanded its balance sheet and created a large quantity of excess reserves, which, for a variety of reasons, commercial banks have not mobilized into credit creation….
The Forgotten Depression, Jim Grant's excellent book about the 1920-21 downturn and the recovery that followed, has generated a burst of critical commentary from persons anxious to reject the principal conclusion Grant draws from that episode. That conclusion, in brief, is that the U.S. was able to…