Banking's Past, Present, and Future
Writing nearly 40 years ago, historian Ernest R. May warned of the dangers of misusing history for policy purposes. May was primarily concerned that policy makers drew the wrong lessons from the past. In their opinion piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School and an advisor to Mitt Romney, … Read more
Writing in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, John Taylor takes the Federal Reserve to task for its “interventionist” behavior. Taylor’s main complaint with the Fed’s conduct of monetary policy is that it is unstable and unpredictable (verging on the whimsical!). He argues that this stems in part from the Fed’s mandate to pursue low unemployment in … Read more
In a recently published op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Stanford economists John Cogan and John Taylor argue that: “Temporary, targeted tax reductions and increases in government spending are not good economics. They have repeatedly failed to increase economic growth on a sustainable basis. What may come as a surprise is that such policies … Read more
Apparently, the editors of the Wall Street Journal have a rule about the number of op-eds each week that praise Ronald Reagan. I haven’t figured out the exact count yet, but Robert Barro’s piece in Monday’s Journal gets the paper off to a nice start on their weekly quota. It’s a pity that there are … Read more