Mises Institute/Ryan McMaken/6-30-2022
“Jerome Powell appears to subscribe to the Burnsian way of thinking, however. If his comments in congressional testimony and press conferences are any indication, Powell still believes it is possible to ‘solve’ price inflation through extremely mild increases to key interest rates and through miniscule reductions in the scale of the Fed’s portfolio.”
USAGOLD note: McMaken, senior editor at the Mises Institute, is not the first to liken Powell’s approach to inflation to that of Arthur Burns. His concentration, though, is on the politics behind the economics at the Fed – then and now. “Powell’s Fed,” he concludes, “is a Fed that does no more than is absolutely necessary to convince the public and policy makers that it is ‘doing something’ about inflation. This is all short-term political posturing, and reflects that fact Powell – like Janet Yellen before him – is a politically minded technocrat who thinks in terms of using the central bank to protect the regime.”
