Olivier Blanchard is rightly counted among the most eminent macroeconomists of our time, and his pronouncements on macroeconomic matters should not be dismissed casually. So his commentary yester...
https://uneasymoney.com/2022/03/15/wherein-i-try-to-calm-professor-blanchards-nerves/
Larry Summers continues to lead the charge for a quick, decisive tightening of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve to head off an inflationary surge that, he believes, is about to overtake us....
https://uneasymoney.com/2021/12/19/sic-transit-inflatio-mundi/
The role of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff (aka Smoot-Hawley Tariff) in causing the Great Depression has been an ongoing subject of controversy for close to a century. Ron Batchelder and I wrote a paper...
https://uneasymoney.com/2021/03/05/the-hawley-smoot-tariff-and-the-great-depression/
Here is another section from my work in progress on the Smithian and Humean traditions in monetary economics. The discussion starts with a comparison of the negative view David Hume took toward b...
I recently came across this excerpt from a longer interview of Milton Friedman conducted by Brian Lamb on Cspan in 1994. In this excerpt Lamb asks Friedman what he thinks of the Fed, and Friedman...
https://uneasymoney.com/2018/02/19/milton-friedmans-rabble-rousing-case-for-abolishing-the-fed/
Last week I listened to David Beckworth on his excellent podcast Macro Musings, interviewing Douglas Irwin. I don’t think I’ve ever met Doug, but we’ve been in touch a number of times via e...
The gold standard, as an international institution, existed for less than 40 years, emerging first, and by accident, in England, and more than a century and a half later, spreading by a rapid ser...
Last week David Beckworth and Ramesh Ponnuru wrote a very astute op-ed article in the New York Times explaining how the Fed was tightening its monetary policy in 2008 even as the economy was rapi...
https://uneasymoney.com/2016/01/31/how-not-to-win-friends-and-influence-people/
I wasn’t planning to post today, but I just saw (courtesy of the New York Times) a classic example of the economic prejudice wrapped in high-minded sloganeering that I talked about yesterday. D...
https://uneasymoney.com/2015/09/01/more-economic-prejudice-and-high-minded-sloganeering/
I had not planned to post anything today, but after coming across an article (“What the Fed Really Wants Is to Reduce Real Wages”) by Alex Pollock of AEI on Real Clear Markets this morning, I...
https://uneasymoney.com/2015/07/17/the-pot-calls-the-kettle-black/