mises.org / By Frank Shostak / February 8, 2013
At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in San Diego (January 4–6, 2013), Harvard professor of economics Benjamin Friedman said,
The standard models we teach … simply have no room in them for what most of the world’s central banks have done in response to the crisis.
Friedman also advises sweeping aside the importance of the role of monetary aggregates. On this he said,
If the model you are teaching has an “M” in it, it is a waste of students’ time. Delete it.
According to most economic experts, the Fed has re-written the central banking playbook, cutting interest rates to near zero and tripling its balance sheet by buying bonds. The federal funds rate target is currently at 0.25%. The Fed’s balance sheet jumped from $0.86 trillion in January 2007 to $2.9 trillion in January 2013.
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