In a recent Globe Asia article Professor Hanke in “The Great 18-year Real Estate Cycle,” refutes Bernanke’s recent claim at the American Economic Association meetings in January (“Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble” that Fed Policy was not responsible for the housing bubble.
Hanke argues, “The Fed should dust off the works of economists from the Austrian school, particularly Prof. Friedrich Hayek’s. The main lesson from the Austrians was their extreme skepticism about the exclusive reliance on one magic index – the price level – to guide central bank policy.”
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nice to see the recognition but a minor disagreement:
“The main lesson from the Austrians was their extreme skepticism about the exclusive reliance on one magic index – the price level – to guide central bank policy.”
isn’t the main lesson fromt the austrians that there is no feasible way to dictate a sensible central bank policy and therefore central banks do more harm than good and should be eliminated?
No, I would say that the main lesson when it comes to macro is that credit expansion is the cause of booms and busts.
AJ, obviously you are correct and i could’ve been more specific by adding “with regards to the central bank isn’t the main lesson………..etc. etc.”
Matt,
I agree with you. The main lesson is that price is the only means to distribute resources, and that by distorting that price you create misallocations of resources. Applying this to central banks, if you distort the price of borrowing capital you will cause the misallocation of capital.
I don’t have the link to the original article, but I think the quoted statement is correct. Austrian economists are skeptical that a price level can efficiently guide central bank policy.
I would say they are skeptical that ANY attainable information could effectively guide central bank policy.
The articles usually show up with a one or two week lag on Hanke’s web page at Cato.
When you get to his page scroll down to opinion and commentary.
It is worth a look.
Link:
http://forums.wallstreetexaminer.com/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=1308
The main lesson from FA Hayek regarding the issue power over money was that it should be denationalised and available from private banks, companies, and many others. His theory of competing currencies did not envision any central banks.
Another author, commenting on the idea of issuing private currency, noted that any productive person willing to accept the money they issued was a more appropriate party to issue money than a government. For, he noted, governments do not produce anything, they only extort and coerce. They are precisely the wrong people to have the issue power.
If there is only one “main lesson” from Austrian economics, it seems to be: central planning never works. As von Mises noted, it always leads to distortions. The only way to avoid the death camps of totalitarian government is to let the free market determine market clearing prices. There is no other mechanism capable of finding market clearing prices – to the dismay of central planners everywhere.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11163
‘Bank credit swells and shrinks in synch with the land cycle. The two interact in a positive feedback process: swelling bank credit raises land prices; buyers need more credit to purchase the land; the appreciated land then serves as collateral for more bank loans, and so on.’
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