The story behind the book

 

 

See the book here.

When Benjamin and I embarked on this adventure a few months ago we decided to tell a story that almost anyone could read with some pleasure and understand, even if they didn´t always agree with the way our “script” was set up.

One requirement was that the book´s title had to have “Market Monetarism” in it. The subtitle: “Roadmap to Economic Prosperity” was decided just before publication and the hint was given by Robert Hetzel who e-mailed me to say he had “liked the ‘Roadmap’ I had sent him very much”.

We decided to begin our story in 1960 because that´s when economists became VIP´s. Given what soon transpired, one may think economists, especially those in charge of policy, are a ‘dangerous specie’. Maybe so!

We are greatful to many people. Over the last few years a diverse group of people have ‘flocked together’ through blogs and comments and helped shape our story. We were very pleased when Scott said he would write a Foreword “with pleasure”.

We want to thank in particular Catherine Johnson who took the trouble to do a detailed ‘copy-edit’ (but all errors that remain are exclusively our responsibility). Becky Hargrove was always encouraging and also very sweeet.

It´s interesting that a duo comprised of an American living in rural Thailand and a Brazilian residing in the ‘jungle’ that is the city of Sao Paulo in Brazil and who never met in person could comunicate and exchange ideas so easily (even with a 10 hour time difference!)

But it all started 4 years ago when Scott Sumner began to blog. Initially the name was the horrible sounding “quasi monetarist”. Thank goodness Lars Christensen came up with the much better sounding “Market Monetarist”. I was especially pleased to host Lars´ post in September 2011, before he began his own blog, where he introduced the ‘concept’. I have also never met Lars personally but we often ‘talk’ on ‘Google chat’, sometimes for quite a while.

Back in late 2009 I wrote a ‘memo to myself’ which I called “The crisis from an AD perspective“. Almost two years ago I posted it. I was convinced by the story I told! NGDP-LT is really the way to go.

It is also good that MM´s are not a ‘monolithic group’. There are different strands of thought running among the participants. I will mention just one: the difference I have with David Beckworth on the ‘approprietness’ of monetary policy during the 2002-05 period. David believes the Fed was “too expansionary”. In Chapter 6 of our book we argue the Fed acted ‘properly’ when it kept interest rates low “for too long”.

We were pleased to see that our book came out just as market monetarism and NGDP targeting are getting so much attention, both by being endorsed by ‘famous’ people and by being critised by equally ‘famous’ people.

We hope it modestly contributes to the ‘debate’.