Tell me where the below is wrong or add nuance to some of the claims:
- Misconceptions around monetary policy
- Similarities btw 1929, 1990s (Japan), & 2008 & lessons learned
- Was post 1929 recovery b/c of or in spite of New Deal?
- Keynesian vs Austrian school
Interest rates are monetary policy.
Interest rates are affected by monetary policy, but they on their own don't provide a clear measure of the stance of monetary policy.
e.g People equate low rates w/ easy money & high rates w/ tight money
& that actually leads to very high interest rates
Other misconceptions flow from that misguided belief that interest rates are monetary policy—
e.g. That monetary policy is ineffective at zero interest rates
Drawing conclusions from price or rates w/o thinking abt underlying reasons
Prices can be high for two reasons, demand can go up or supply can go down
And if prices are high, because supply went down, then yes, consumers will buy less.
Same w/ interest rates: they can change for many reasons.
One might be easy money.
Another might be b/c of changes in underlying economy, often due to a previous tight money decision which slowed economy
Wages are higher during prosperous periods.
Just like wealthy people tend to drive nicer cars.
But driving a Porsche doesn't make you wealthy, and artificially raising wage levels doesn't make it a prosperous period.
As head of fed he endorsed standard fed view that low interest rates were an accommodative monetary policy
If you look at Great Depression or Japan in 90s, interest rates were ~zero.
Consensus view is they could have done so much more to to promote monetary stimulus and a rapid recovery
It's cooler to do a lot of QE
The central banks that are actually doing the most stimulus appear to be doing the least because the stimulus creates enough economic growth where interest rates stay above zero & you don't have to do a lot of QE
When inflation or nominal GDP fall below target, you promise to buy as many assets as necessary to get market expectations up to your target
Prefers GDP targeting over inflation targeting.
- Banking problems in all 3.
- Nominal interest rates fell ~0
- QE
- Deflation in 1929/1990, 0 inflation in 2008
- All caused by big drop in aggregate demand
How could we avoid bank failures?
Adopt Canadian system.
- after 1930s, don't allow deflation
- after WWII, don't bias towards too much inflation
- we've only had 3 recessions since 1982 (excluding today), had 8 recessions in previous 37 yrs before that
Misunderstood Phillips Curve: we thought you could buy unemployment with higher inflation, but that only works temporarily. So ended up w/ higher of both
Interest rates were high, we thought money was tight, & we thought it wasn't monetary policy's fault
Real problem: We were printing money at too rapid rate that was generating inflation & ultimately pushing up interest rates
Learning: we had to raise interest rates by more than inflation to bring inflation down
(see another thread soon about COVID)
Hard to say. Anytime you spend a ton on, say, military, you'll increase employment
You could argue National Recovery act (e.g price controls) inhibited the recovery
Dollar devaluation & nothing else could have done the job
During high inflation, monetarist ideas get popular.
During deflation & zero interest rates, Keynesian ideas win out.
In 1920s, we were printing money but weren't having much inflation bc ppl hoarded cash so ppl left Monetarism
Then long era of stability under New Keynesianism (synthesis of 2), until 2008, when we went to deflationary zero interest rate environment.
Old Keynesianism returns (fiscal stimulus over monetary policy)
Critics said if you borrow a lot, you'd push up interest rates and crowd out private investment.
But stimulus efforts didn't result in high inflation, or some of the problems people worried about with QE
Consider business cycles as Grand Canyon:
Keynes approach is to fill in the canyons so that the ground is flat
Austrian way: look at flat land with mountains sticking up occasionally and do the mountains as excesses
Austrian: Business cycle is caused by excessive exuberance & malinvestment. Booms are outliers and must be reset.
1/ Statism & Nationalization
2/ Income redistribution.
Nordic countries have the latter not the former.
Venezuela has the former not the latter.
A big increase in the global demand for gold can mess things up.
/FIN
Learned this from reading & talking to Scott Sumner, Bryan Caplan and listening to EconTalk & Macro Musings