Friday, March 2, 2012

The Fed's Performance Review

Caught up in circles
Confusion is nothing new
--Cyndi Lauper

Presentation by UGA prof George Selgin that analyzes Fed performance against its own stated goals (full employment, stable prices, etc). Prof Selgin demonstrates that the Fed fails miserably on its own performance review criteria.

He also notes that bureacrats, economists, and other allies of the Fed continue to espouse that the Fed is achieving its goals--a position that is completely unsound.

He suggests that those who formed the National Monetary seeking monetary system reform on the back of the Banking Panic of 1907 should be disappointed at the fruits of their efforts. More than a century after the Fed's creation, the data suggest that the objectives behind the establishment of this institution are not being met. In fact, conditions have likely declined.

This assumes, of course, that the stated objectives of the Fed are in fact the real objectives of the designers. This assumption is certainly constestable.

3 comments:

dgeorge12358 said...

The failure to modernize the financial oversight system sooner is the most important reason why this crisis was more severe than any since the Great Depression, and why it was so hard to put out the fires of the crisis. The failure to reform sooner is why the crisis caused gross domestic product to fall at an annual rate of 9% in the last quarter of 2008; why millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, businesses and savings; why the housing market is still so far from recovery; and why our national debt has grown so significantly.
~Timothy Geithner

fordmw said...

Only a fool would believe that drivel.

dgeorge12358 said...

It is very important for people to understand that the United States of America and no country around the world can devalue its way to prosperity, to be competitive. It is not a viable, feasible strategy, and we will not engage in it.
~Timothy Geithner

If you put 100 dollars in the bank in 1970, those same dollars today would only have about 17 percent of the purchasing power that they did back then.
~Lew Rockwell