Mr. Blinder, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University and vice chairman of the Promontory Interfinancial Network, is a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Ignorance is not bliss, especially when your economy is faltering and sound policies are badly needed.
For months, we have witnessed the spectacle of people arguing that Keynes was wrong. Somehow, additional government spending actually reduces employment—even when the economy has huge amounts of spare capacity and unused labor desperate for work; even when the central bank will prevent interest rates from rising to "crowd out" private spending. Really?
One current catchphrase is "job-killing spending." Hmmm. How, exactly, does more spending kill jobs when there is idle capacity and no threat of rising interest rates? Stumped? So am I.
The anti-Keynesian revival has been disheartening enough. But now the economic equivalent of the Flat Earth Society is turning its fury on Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve. Critics ranging from German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble to tea party favorite Sarah Palin—which is quite a range—have spoken as if Bernanke & Co. have lost their marbles and are embarking on a wild policy misadventure.
All in all, it looks like the nation and the world need an Economics 101 refresher. So let's start with the basics.
The Fed's plan is to purchase about $600 billion of additional U.S. government securities over about eight months, creating more bank reserves ("printing money") to do so. This policy is one version of quantitative easing, or "QE" for short. And since the Fed has done QE before, this episode has been branded "QE2."
Here's the first Economics 101 question: When central banks seek to stimulate their economies, how do they normally do it? If you answered, "by lowering short-term interest rates," you get half credit. For full credit, you must explain how: They create new bank reserves to purchase short-term government securities (in the U.S., that's mostly Treasury bills). Yes, they print money....
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
