A Central Bank Reckoning
“Even the best set of rules and the tightest, most targeted, narrowly circumscribed mandate won’t be enough unless central bankers are willing to emulate something akin to judicial restraint.” ~ Samuel Gregg
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Against Interest Rate Reductionism
“Monetary policy is about money, not interest rates. Central bankers should stop trying to implement monetary policy by messing with relative prices. There are better measures and more effective transmission mechanisms.” ~ Alexander William Salter
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The Unquestioned Monopoly
“Despite the arguments made against monopoly and the arguments made in favor of competition, there is one monopoly that largely goes unquestioned. I’m referring, of course, to the monopoly over currency issuance.” ~ Joshua R. Hendrickson
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Interest Rates and Fed Tightening
“While interest rates can sometimes be useful as a policy barometer, the various monetary measures (from the monetary base at narrowest to total nominal expenditures at broadest) matter far more.” ~ Alexander William Salter
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Fed Up With the Fed
“The Hamilton-Bagehot rule was superior to the modern Fed practice of flooding the markets with cheap money because it allowed insolvent firms to go bankrupt while supplying emergency loans to troubled but solvent companies.” ~ Robert E. Wright
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Financial Stability and the Fed
“The Fed failed at its initial task of promoting financial stability. It has failed at conducting monetary policy as well. Given the Fed’s major financial-policy and monetary-policy errors since 2008, we should explore major structural changes.” ~ Alexander William Salter
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Modeling the Money Supply
“We have to be very careful about generalizing across money and banking regimes. Many features of one system don’t translate to others. Depending on the ‘rules of the game,’ the supply of money responds to the price of money in very different ways.” ~ Alexander William Salter
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Federal Reserve Operating Losses and the Federal Budget Deficit
“In 2023, the Fed will likely report tens of billions of dollars in operating losses as it raises interest rates to combat raging inflation. Will Fed losses increase the budget deficit as logic dictates they should, or will they be treated as an off-budget expenditure?” ~ Paul H. Kupiec & Alex J. Pollock
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The Fed’s Tough Year
“The current push to expand the Fed’s mandates is consistent with Shull’s Paradox, which states that the more blunders the Fed makes, the more powers and prestige it gets. But we should be reducing the Fed’s powers and mandates, not increasing them.” ~ Alex J. Pollock
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Understanding the Basics of Money Demand
“If nothing else, a cash-balances interpretation of the equation of exchange can help us better understand the relationship between the money supply and nominal income.” ~ Alexander William Salter
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The Fed Needs a Single Mandate
“A purchasing target would direct the Fed towards an achievable goal that would improve American households’ material wellbeing. Legislators from both parties should make a single Fed mandate a key part of their agendas.” ~ Thomas L. Hogan & Alexander William Salter
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Price Stability and Nominal GDP Targeting
“While we should not stubbornly insist on first-best policy if the second-best is all we can get, neither should we ignore the question of which policy is first-best. As long as we are reconsidering the Fed’s mandate, nominal GDP targeting should be on the table.” ~ Alexander William Salter
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