Yellen In Line to Head Fed, But How Will She Lead?


The Real News Network has the video Yellen In Line to Head Fed, But How Will She Lead?

I find the entire video mildly interesting, but I took especial note of remarks by Greg Palast.


PALAST: You know, in the case of Rand Paul, you know, he preferred Milton Friedman for the post of Federal Reserve chief. And The Wall Street Journal reminded him that Friedman had been dead a few years. I know that because I was a student of Friedman.

There is a belief among the Republicans, who have a very poor understanding of economics, and some of the moderate Democrats, who have even a poorer understanding of economics, they think that if you print a lot of money, that automatically prices go up. You know, it’s some real simple formula that if you double the money supply, prices double tomorrow. And they’re always scaring us about the 1920 hyperinflation Germany, when you needed it to, you know, take a barrel full of currency to buy a loaf of bread.

Well, it was actually Milton Friedman, my professor, who came up with the monetarist theory that one way that you stop a depression is by printing more money. And as long as the economy is–as long as there’s a lot of unemployment in the economy, that is, the economy’s not at its maximum capacity, you’re not going to see prices rise. We have increased the money supply in America by over $4 trillion in the last few years, and prices are barely above dead flat.

So, first of all, they’re attacking Yellen on the basis of a theory that they do not understand.


Compare this to my previous post Senator Richard Shelby’s Ignorance of Keynesian Economics. In Shelby’s questioning of Yellen, he pinned the blame for monetarism on Keynes and cut Yellen short when she tried to correct him and said it was a Friedman concept. The very dead Friedman that Paul wants to head the Fed. Talk about confused over economics.

As for the economy being dead flat after the money supply has increased by $4 Trillion, what does that say about Friedman’s monetarist theory?

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