Arnold Kling has a lot of very good arguments packed into this post. He comments on the demand for an audit of the Federal Reserve, suggest that fiscal deficits and accumulated public debt result in inflationary pressures, and that the crisis was (is) about bad bets and excessive leveraging. In other words, we are in the situation we are in due to bad decisions, not loss of confidence in our financial institutions. The best line, inmho, is when he states clearly that: "Everything that the Treasury and the Fed have done in the aftermath of the crisis has focused on the "loss of confidence" aspect, rather than on the "bad decisions" aspect."
Mark Gertler of NYU has an op-ed in Friday's Financial Times defending the Fed's "independence."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/999796bc-7233-11de-ba94-00144feabdc0.html
Strangely, he concentrates on the inflation-fighting under Volker rather than the previous inflation-creation. Furthermore, he pre-judges the outcome of the Fed's recent interventions during the financial crisis. Aside from that, he ignores the poor Fed policy creating "bubbles" under Greenspan. I think there is a confusion between the notion of "independence" and the idea of "good" monetary policy. Consider: recent Fed interventions have not been independent of fiscal policy (with its politically directed expenditures); they have been slavishly accommodating. Yet Gertler considers them "good."
These pro-independence arguments are all (surprisingly) very poor. Yet I do think things would be worse if Congress got *directly* involved in making Fed policy. Bad can go to worse. The main problem is that those who are ideologically wedded to the present system can't imagine real change in the monetary system. I am happy that they are being unnerved.
Posted by: Mario Rizzo | July 20, 2009 at 09:55 AM
How about the felonious decisions that infected the financial operations of our economy from Alpha to Omega?
Posted by: e weick | July 20, 2009 at 01:13 PM
Dare I posit that restoring confidence in bad decisions is the primary driver for every USG action?
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