Jim Grant: The Danger Lurking In The Fed's Monetary Policy

Last Monday, the Federal Reserve embarked on a yearlong listening tour to discover the concerns of the American people. The whole shebang of modern monetary methods - manipulated interest rates, levitated asset values, the supposed necessity of a 2% inflation rate - is on the table for constructive criticism.

Jim Grant: The Danger Lurking In The Fed's Monetary Policy Im-57005

Jim Grant: The Danger Lurking In The Fed's Monetary Policy Im-57005

William McChesney Martin, top left, the Fed’s boss in the ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties, probably wouldn’t have liked the policies of the central bank’s current chairman, Jerome Powell, bottom right.

But you know how it is with constructive criticism. The friend who asks to hear it really doesn’t want any. So it is with Richard H. Clarida, the Columbia University economist turned vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

In a Feb. 22 speech, Clarida invited the public’s comments as the central bank undertakes a top-to-bottom reappraisal of the way it does business. Then he said this: “The fact that the system is conducting this review does not suggest that we are dissatisfied with the existing policy framework.” A comprehensive description of that framework duly followed. So admirably clear was his message that it might have curled your hair.

It might, indeed, except for 10 years’ familiarity with once-heretical ideas. “Quantitative easing” seemed wild-eyed enough at the time it was hatched in 2008. Who objects now?

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-02/jim-grant-danger-lurking-feds-monetary-policy

Jim Grant: The Danger Lurking In The Fed's Monetary Policy

Jim Grant: The Danger Lurking In The Fed's Monetary Policy

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