The National Debt Clock in New York, New York on February 13, 2019 ( rblfmr / Shutterstock.com).Seeking Monetary Stability: The Elusive Gold Standard
United States Federal Reserve Bank building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. (Rob Crandall / Shutterstock.com).Perpetual Inflation vs. Sound Money
The Wizard of Oz as an Allegory for the 1896 Presidential Election
Image: Francey/Shutterstock.comKnowledge, Risk, and the Surprised Banker: A Conversation with Alex Pollock
Who Is This “We” that Should Manage the Economy?
Ending the Fed’s Permanent Inflation Policy
The Federal Reserve Board seeks to maintain an inflation rate around two percent per year. While this rate might sound low for older types who remember double-digit inflation rates in the late 70s and early 80s, and a rate of 5.4 percent as recently as 1990, why tolerate, let alone seek to sustain, any inflation at all? Why not seek to establish zero inflation and stable prices? After all, even an inflation rate of only two percent a year means nominal prices still double every 36 years. And while people can and do broadly adjust their behavior in the face of anticipated inflation, it’s not a seamless process. Inflation distorts people’s economic decisions, whether as producers or consumers, labor or capital, and so imposes costs on us all.
Jackson Hole and Democracy
Janet Yellen, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, center, walks past a protester as she arrives for the Jackson Hole economic symposium, sponsored by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank: Bradly Boner/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThere’s some historical elegance to the fact that the Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is roughly as old as the modern Fed itself. The symposium, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, started in 1978.
Easy Money and Vanishing Trust
The key message of Stephen King’s book is that “we” have been living beyond our means. In his words: “We became delusional. We convinced ourselves that capital markets could deliver ever rising prosperity. We thought we could borrow without limit, always confident that the future would be better than the past.” And not for one moment, he adds, “did we think we would ever succumb to Japanese-style economic stagnation or Argentine-style broken promises.” King emphasizes that we are all in the same boat, and that we were all wrong. It is fair to say, however, that some raised a voice of…
The Great Society, a Half-Century On
President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” speech is about to turn 50 years old. The speech, which the President gave as the commencement address at the University of Michigan on May 22, 1964, is a milestone in American history and instantly lodged that phrase in our political vocabulary. The most grandiose political slogan in a roster that includes the New Deal and the New Frontier, the Great Society was more than a set of policy objectives. Rather, Johnson described it as the commitment to undertake an eternal quest, one that would elevate American civilization by expanding the federal government’s responsibilities and capabilities.…
Responses
William Voegeli’s Liberty Forum essay reminds us of the absurdity of so much American political discourse of the past 60 years. The call for greater state-mandated redistribution and entitlements in order to “oppose the drift into the homogenized society” and “fight spiritual unemployment,” to combat “loneliness and boredom” and “build a richer life of mind…
With the 50th anniversary of President Johnson’s “Great Society” speech fast approaching, we are seeing a flood of historical remembrance and analysis, and there will be more in the weeks and months ahead. The television historians and talking heads will be swooning over how much was accomplished by an 89th Congress that was, in the…
The 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” speech offers us an opportunity to reflect not just on the speech itself but also on the half century of consequences that have followed in the wake of the grand project it announced. As William Voegeli notes in his Liberty Forum essay, he commencement address Johnson delivered to the…
