The Jedi mind trick – Matt O’Brien’s insightful version of the Chuck Norris...
Our friend Matt O’Brien has a great new comment on the Atlantic.com. Matt is one of the most clever commentators on monetary matters in the US media. In Matt’s new comment he set out to explain the...
View ArticlePlease keep “politics” out of the monetary reaction function
During the Great Moderation it was normal to say that the Federal Reserve and the ECB (and many other central banks for that matter) was following a relatively well-defined monetary policy reaction...
View ArticleImagine that a S&P500 future was the Fed’s key policy tool
Here is Yale economics professor Stephen Roach: “The ECB is pretty much out of ammunition.” This sentence probably best illustrates what is wrong with monetary policy thinking in today’s world....
View ArticleProject African Monetary Reform (PAMR)
Project African Monetary Reform (PAMR) – post 1 The blogoshere is full of debates about US monetary policy and the mistakes of the ECB are also hotly debated. However, other than that there is really...
View ArticleNGDP level targeting – the true Free Market alternative (we try again)
Most of the blogging Market Monetarists have their roots in a strong free market tradition and nearly all of us would probably describe ourselves as libertarians or classical liberal economists who...
View ArticleBetween the money supply and velocity – the euro zone vs the US
When crisis hit in 2008 it was mostly called the subprime crisis and it was normally assumed that the crisis had an US origin. I have always been skeptical about the US centric description of the...
View ArticleFriedman’s Japanese lessons for the ECB
I often ask myself what Milton Friedman would have said about the present crisis and what he would have recommended. I know what the Friedmanite model in my head is telling me, but I don’t know what...
View ArticleTime to end discretionary monetary policy!
This week has been nearly 100% about monetary policy in the financial markets and in the international financial media. In fact since 2008 monetary policy has been the main driver of prices in...
View ArticleThe fiscal cliff and the Bernanke-Evans rule in a simple static IS/LM model
Sometimes simple macroeconomic models can help us understand the world better and even though I am not uncritical about the IS/LM model it nonetheless has some interesting features which from time to...
View ArticleThe monetary transmission mechanism – causality and monetary policy rules
Most economists pay little or no attention to nominal GDP when they think (and talk) about the business cycle, but if they had to explain how nominal GDP is determined they would likely mostly talk...
View Article