James and Menzie

A Gold Standard Does Not Require Interest-Rate Targeting“, Lawrence White critiques an article by Matt O’Brien, noting the operation of the classical gold standard did not involve interest targeting, and hence would not require large variations in interest rates. In point of fact, the classical gold standard did not rely on explicit interest rate manipulation; nor did adjustment work through the Humean price-specie-flow mechanism wherein excess provision of money leads to an outflow of gold. While the level of interest rates have exhibited greater variability in the past 35 years, due to variations in inflation, the volatility of interest rates — as measured by changes in interest rates — was higher during the classical gold standard (for Great Britain/UK as shown in Figure 2). Over the 1880M01-1913M12 period, the standard deviation of monthly changes in the call discount rate was 0.62 percentage points; over the 1990M01-2007M12, the standard deviation was 0.32 percentage points, even including the drop in the level from 15% to 6% 1990-92…

Yesterday, I posted some observations on the signatories to the letter supporting Stephen Moore for the Fed  letter posted [PDF]. Here for the sake of completeness is the list of the affiliations the signatories provided. University of Hawaii at Manoa (former) University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (former) U. S. House of Representatives (former) Isn’t that

Isn’t that Exactly the Definition of… China is considering a U. S. request to shift some tariffs on key agricultural goods to other products so the Trump administration can sell any eventual trade deal as a win for farmers ahead of the 2020 election, people familiar with the situation said. Recall Mr. Trump’s attempts to buoy Boeing, intervene in merger talks, support the steel industry through protection, and so forth. Now consider this entry from The Library of Economics and Liberty: Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it.

Economists Supporting Stephen Moore for the Fed We get an inkling from a letter posted [PDF] yesterday, with “105 economists and conservative activists” Ed Fuelner has a PhD in polisci, James Huffman has law degrees, Merrill Matthews has a PhD in humanities, Brian Domitrovic a PhD in history, Alfredo Ortiz a PhD in development studies. About 8 did their graduate study with James Buchanan and/or in the public choice school. Some Chief Economists have no advanced degree: John Williams of ALEC (and of course Don Luskin of Trend Macrolytics)