After reading the introduction to the just released book edited by John Taylor et al, I noticed the words money and monetary policy are conspicuously missing:
Government Policies and the Delayed Economic Recovery examines the reasons for the weak recovery from the recent US recession and explores the possibility that government economic policy is the problem.
The book concludes with key recommendations to help restore prosperity, including a broad-based tax reform that cuts tax rates, equalizes tax treatment across all types of capital, broadens the tax base, confronts entitlement spending, and, more broadly, reduces government spending as a percentage of GDP, as well as reforming unemployment benefits to reward job acceptance and accumulating human capital. The implications are clear: the future of both the American and the world economy is riding on an excellent diagnosis of the problem and appropriate changes in policy.
A unified explanation of the crisis is provided by monetary policy: It was responsible for the “depth” of the fall and is also behind the so-called “weak recovery”.
Well, I’m off to Yellowstone today.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. I’d like monetary policy to be “Old Faithful”, while instead we have Bernanke’s Jackson “Hole”.
Taylor is also an adviser to Romney, and Romney has a five-page plan out (with Taylor’s name on it) to revive the US economy, also silent on monetary policy.
A suspicion I have is that Romney will endorse MM after being elected; Taylor liked Hatzel’s book, and once a GOP’er is in the White House, Taylor will want growth again. Taylor knows the Japan story.
I can think of no other logical explanation for Taylor’s sudden lack of interest in monetary policy.
What do you make of the speech?
The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/30/idINL6E8JUJBA20120830
“Juergen Stark, a former ECB chief economist, piled on the German resistance in another newspaper interview on Tuesday, saying the ECB’s policy course meant it was being politicised and would ultimately no longer be able to deliver stable prices”.
The “dying” don´t need “stable prices”, they need “food and water”
Damn, Scott already used that one. Still, ironic that the most righteous people also tend to be the most wrong.