The Federal Reserve this week raised the Federal Funds Rate a quarter point to 1.25 percent, bringing the rate to the highest it’s been in eight years. One might now say monetary policy has progressed from a policy of “ultra low” rates to simply a policy of low rates.
How this will play out over time continues to depend quite a bit on how much the Fed shrinks its balance sheet and how soon a recession descends on the economy.
Not surprisingly, then, many continue to discuss the best ways to reform the Federal Reserve. But, there’s definitely a wrong way to do this.
This week on Mises Weekends: Arguments for a “rules based” Fed are gaining momentum on both the political Left and Right — and even among some libertarians. Would ideas like NGDP targeting and the “Taylor Rule” really make the Fed less dangerous? Would they be an improvement on the Fed’s current discretionary approach? Can monetary rules” really contain booms and busts, or would Yellen and company simply break them at the first sign of the next crash? Professor Peter Klein joins Jeff to discuss How Not to Reform the Fed.
And in case you missed them, here are this weeks Mises Wire articles, covering a wide array of topics including: government backed monopoly and protectionism, crazy foreign policy, Mises’s influence in the EU, deregulation of the airline industry, and does it really pay to get a college education anymore.
- Government as the Source of Monopoly: US Airlines Edition by Peter G. Klein
- Fractional-Reserve Banking and Money Creation by Frank Shostak
- With Cuba Policy, Trump Strikes Another Blow Against Economic Freedom by Ryan McMaken
- How We Should Name Business Cycles by Mark Thornton
- Terry McAuliffe’s Fuzzy Math on Gun Homicides by Ryan McMaken
- What If Taxpayers Could Choose if Taxes Went to the State Level or Federal Level? Ryan McMaken
- Four Reasons Why College Degrees Are Becoming Useless by Jonathan Newman
- June FOMC Announcement: Rate Hike and Balance Sheet Plans by C.Jay Engel
- The US Taxpayers Have Spent Enough on the War in Afghanistan by Tim Haffner
- Mobility and Nobility by Theodore Dalrymple
- Mises-Influenced MP Becomes Brexit Minister by Tho Bishop
- Jeff Deist Joins Power Trading Radio to Discuss the Economy
- The Myth of Infrastructure Spending by Ryan McMaken
- Let’s Fully Deregulate the Airline Industry by Stephan F. Gohmann
- Wages and Subsistence by Ludwig von Mises
- Could Donald Trump Save the Internet? by Tho Bishop
- Fed Officials Can’t See What’s Right In Front of Them by Jonathan Newman
- Government Guaranteed Income is Not a Solution by Henry Hazlitt
- The Collapse of Penn Station: Another Failure of Government “Enterprise” by Gregory Bresiger
- The US Government Punishes People for Helping Dying Children by Jacob G. Hornberger
