BERKELEY – Complaints about the inflationary effects of American monetary policy are rampant, despite there being barely a hint of inflation in the United States. Rapidly growing catch-up economies are paddling furiously to avoid being dragged down by a torrent of capital inflows. Prominent policymakers, desperate for alternatives to America’s malfunctioning monetary system, have gone so far as to allude to a return to the gold standard.
I am not talking about 2011, but about 1964. We have been here before.
Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System, published this month.
In 1964, it was the rapidly growing economies of Europe, still catching up to the US, that were howling about the Federal Reserve. As a result of a recklessly expansionary American policy, they argued, they were being flooded with imported finance. The US was “exporting inflation.”
Copyright: Project Syndicate 2011
Posts
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen