August 28, 2010
The economists and central bankers attending the annual meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming apparently have not noticed the collapse of the housing bubble and the wreckage it has caused. This is the only plausible explanation for a WSJ article that told readers about a paper on a new approach to fiscal policy that argues:
“fiscal policy could benefit from the more scientific approach taken by monetary policy over the past two decades.”
The article continues:
“The former U.S. Federal Reserve economist [the person presenting the paper] noted how monetary policy has improved after central banks started to adopt goals such as inflation targeting and as central bankers started to articulate the ‘science’ in public speeches.”
People who pay attention to the economy know that the monetary policy pursued over the last three decades has devastated the economy, leaving tens of millions of workers in the United States unemployed or underemployed. It would be hard to imagine a policy that could produce more disastrous results than the single-minded focus on inflation that central banks followed even as housing bubbles in the U.S. and elsewhere grew to ever more dangerous levels.
If the central bankers and economists at Jackson Hole still don’t understand how harmful these policies have been then it should raise enormous concern in Congress and among the general public about the competence of the people controlling economic policy. This should have been the main focus of a news article on the meetings.
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