Economics

There is, after all, at least one impulse among humans that’s more deep-seated than their “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange.” I mean, of course, their propensity to let themselves be thoroughly bamboozled.

On the Fed’s “instruments of monetary control,” which include devices for regulating the total quantity of bank reserves and circulating Federal Reserve notes, and also for regulating the quantity of bank deposits and other forms of privately-created money that will be supported by any given quantity of bank reserves.

A better alternative, if only it can somehow be achieved, or at least approximated, is a monetary system that adjusts the stock of money in response to changes in the demand for money balances, thereby reducing the need for changes in the general level of prices.

What sort of monetary policy or regime best avoids the costs of having too much or too little money?

How can a central bank manage a quantity without being certain just how to define, let alone measure, that quantity? How is it possible for the quantity of money supplied to differ from the quantity demanded? When those things do differ, how can one tell? Finally, just what does “the demand for money” mean?

What, exactly, is “monetary policy” about? Why is there such a thing at all? What should we want to accomplish by it — and what should we not try to accomplish?