A Guest Post by Benjamin Cole
No less than three times in his career—at least three—iconic monetarist Milton Friedman bluntly blamed economic contractions on too-tight central bank policies.
The Great Depression, the U.S. recession of 1958, and Japan’s Eternal Stagnation after 1992.
In the last two cases, Friedman unabashedly told central bankers to print a lot more money—in fact, in 1998 he told the Bank of Japan to start buying bonds, and if that didn’t work, then to keep buying more bonds. Run the presses until they melt.
Sadly, economics has become politics in drag, at least in the United States. It is simply un-PC for any right-wing or conservative economist today to ever call for monetary expansionism. To be a perpetual inflation scold is the only acceptable posture, usually in tones of fear-mongering underscored by moralizing righteousness.
(The left-wing is clueless too; they keep rhapsodizing about huge federal deficits, of the type that accomplished nothing in Japan or, more recently, in the United States).
Scouring through the Internet, I have searched in vain for right-wing economists who called for aggressive growth policies by the U.S. Federal Reserve after 2008, or before 2008 for that matter.
Conclusion: A whole pillar of thought has vanished from the conservative landscape. Today, right-wingers do not believe—as Milton Friedman did believe—that an expansionist central bank can spur growth in the right circumstances.
This is a lamentable development, all the more so as the left-wing—so enamored of relentless federal borrowing and spending—also eschews monetary expansionism.
The upshot is, there is no one in the mainstream American political spectrum to fight for an aggressive growth-oriented Federal Reserve, and the Federal Open Market Committee has become populated by nattering nabobs of monetary negativism.
The stagnation wrought by tight money is painfully obvious; Japan after 1992, or Europe today, or the United States after 2008 all are paying the price of too-restrictive central bankers.
So extreme has the modern variant of political correctness become, that many now right-wingers call for a central bankers’ “single mandate”—that is, the Fed exists only to preserve price stability, preferably around zero inflation, unless minor deflation is accommodated.
While obsessed with peering in their economic microscopes for inflation, the American right has forsaken its best raison d’étre—robust economic growth.
Remember that? Robust economic growth? Or is that a concept now consigned to the dustbin of history, as too dangerous for price stability?
Historinhas 
Phillips Curve reasoning has always held that “growth spells inflation”. This was also true in the 90s, heyday of the Great Moderation, when growth was robust and stable and inflation was low and even falling. In those days, even the “left”, and Krugman is a good example, were shouting out loud that the Fed was “behind the curve”, that the limits to growth had been surpassed, and that inflation would soon come roaring back. To his credit, Greenspan didn´t accede to those “rate rising” demands. It all came together in 2008 and now growth has been “tamed” in order to keep inflation at bay!
There are a few economists on the right who have approached the situation with some sanity. Ponnuru. Laffer said he was wrong about inflation fear mongering. Bob McTeer demolished Meltzer in the WSJ. And then, there’s David Beckworth. But you’re right. It’s very disheartening that I can count them all on one hand. One thing is for sure though, mainstream conservatism has taken away the one thing that made them more tolerable than the left with all of the inflation nutter nonsense. Now, I have very little in common.
I also want to point out that conservatives also forgot something else that Friedman said about making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. The “just say no” political tactic is quite damaging to nearly everyone.
To the always thoughtful Dajeeps: Good points. But scarce and late…Pethokoukis at AEI also…but these guys seem to be getting zero traction in the right-wing….