The Fed is tasked with fighting inflation that neither it nor Congress understands. See the accepted view among politicians, economists and pundits that if the Fed centrally plans low, but not-too-low unemployment, the price level will be kept in check. The notion of a “Goldilocks” economy would be the silliest notion in economics if […]
Tariffs Are Awful, Gov’t Spending Is Worse. Neither Is Inflation Read More »
There was no “Bidenflation” from 2021 to 2022. History books will make clear that there were rising prices, not inflation. There’s a difference. Just the same, the dollar has declined fairly substantially from March of 2022 until the present, thus the actual inflation that has some worried in the present. Bidenflation from 2021-2022 was
So-Called ‘Bidenflation’ Is What Happened After ‘Bidenflation’ Read More »
Back in March of 2020, former Federal Reserve Board member Kevin Warsh penned an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal (“Let the Fed Administer an Antiviral Shot”) calling for the Federal Reserve to provide “liquidity” to American businesses crushed by lockdowns instituted by coronavirus-panicked politicians. Instead of recommending a cessation of the lockdowns
Neither Govt Spending Nor Fed Printing Brought Higher Prices Read More »
The Federal Reserve doesn’t need to adopt a “Monetary Policy Rule.” Not only would the central bank shed the pretense of rules-based constraints on its power during times of upheaval and uncertainty as is, there’s no good time for meddling by central banks, or for that matter any governmental entity. Market intervention is always
A ‘Monetary Rule’ Doesn’t Suddenly Validate Mkt. Intervention Read More »
If you look at the market prices of consumer goods you’ll much more often than not be blinded to inflation’s truth. To which more than a few readers will reply that prices are precisely the way to divine inflation. Figure that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is “the price of a weighted average market
Market Prices Are A Very Unreliable Way To Detect Inflation Read More »
“If one-half of the commodities in the market rise in exchange value, the very terms imply a fall of the other half; and reciprocally, the fall implies a rise.” – John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy There was a time – particularly among thinkers on the supply-side and supply-side adjacent right – when it was
The Inflation ‘Know-Somethings’ Doth Protest Too Much Read More »
Inflation is all over the news and commentary today, particularly after a presidential election that was allegedly all about it. The problem remains that few who utter the word grasp its singular meaning. This includes Stanford professor Jennifer Burns, who not-so-ironically wrote a book about Milton Friedman. Friedman had his own problems with the
Inflation Is a Shrinkage of the Monetary Unit, Nothing Else Read More »
Lazard chief executive Peter Orszag recently published an opinion piece in the Washington Post that exists as an essential economics lesson for left-leaning Keynesian economic thinkers, along with their erstwhile opposites on the supply-side right. Keynesian and supply-side have been in agreement in recent years that President Biden’s surely wasteful spending at the beginning
Peter Orszag Discredits Keynes…AND Supply-Side on ‘Inflation’ Read More »
Whether it’s actual inflation, or the kind of “inflation” that only economists and their media enablers tend to imagine it to be, a consensus invariably emerges that the Federal Reserve must “raise interest rates” to rein in the lending that has allegedly caused inflation. Translated, price controls from the Federal Reserve to supposedly bring
Banks Wouldn’t Cause Inflation, Not Could They Ever Cause It Read More »
In a video that’s gone viral, the late Milton Friedman correctly asserts about inflation that “consumers don’t produce it,” and “producers don’t produce it.” Only for Friedman to go off track with the observation that “too much government spending” does produce inflation. Ignored by Friedman was that governments aren’t some kind of other capable of extracting spending power from Pluto,
As Economists Do Now, Milton Friedman Got Inflation Wrong Read More »
