{"id":22791,"date":"2017-02-17T20:58:09","date_gmt":"2017-02-18T01:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22791"},"modified":"2017-02-17T20:58:09","modified_gmt":"2017-02-18T01:58:09","slug":"the-art-and-pseudoscience-of-monetary-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22791","title":{"rendered":"The Art and Pseudoscience of Monetary Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Art and Pseudoscience of Monetary Policy\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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Definitely Maybe<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everyone\u2019s got a plan for sale these days.\u00a0 In fact, there are so many plans out there we cannot keep up with them all.\u00a0 Eat celery sticks and lose weight.\u00a0 Think and grow rich.\u00a0 Stocks for the long run.\u00a0 Naturally, plans like these run a dime a dozen.<\/p>\n

All social engineers who get to impose their harebrained schemes on the rest of the world through the coercive powers of the State, as well as all armchair planners regaling us with their allegedly \u201cbetter plans\u201d, should have this highly perceptive quote by Robert Burns tattooed on their foreheads. In case you\u2019re wondering, \u201cgang aft a-gley<\/em>\u201d is slightly old English for \u201cusually turn out to be total crap\u201d. The second part that points out that as a rule, we get nothing but grief and pain instead of promised joy, is applicable to interventionism in general; the so-called \u201cunintended consequences\u201d of interventions almost always turn out to be their main feature and defining characteristic.<\/p>\n

Good plans, however, are scarcer than hen\u2019s teeth.\u00a0 You can\u2019t possibly see them no matter how closely you look.\u00a0 They simply don\u2019t exist. This was the case on Capitol Hill this week, where money and politics collided at the biannual monetary policy gala.<\/p>\n

Despite all the hubbub, no good plans were offered.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, on first glance, no bad plans were offered too. When Fed Chair Janet Yellen\u2019s testimony was finally over, Congress knew less about the Fed\u2019s plans than when it started.<\/p>\n

For instance, when asked if the Federal Reserve would raise rates next month, Fed Chair Janet Yellen\u00a0replied<\/a>, \u201cI can\u2019t tell you exactly which meeting it would be.\u00a0 I would say every meeting is live.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does this mean, really?\u00a0 Does it mean she\u2019ll definitely maybe raise rates?\u00a0 Does it mean she absolutely \u2018might could\u2019 increase them?\u00a0 Only time will tell.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Art and Pseudoscience of Monetary Policy\u00a0 Definitely Maybe Everyone\u2019s got a plan for sale these days.\u00a0 In fact, there are so many plans out there we cannot keep up with them all.\u00a0 Eat celery sticks and lose weight.\u00a0 Think and grow rich.\u00a0 Stocks for the long run.\u00a0 Naturally, plans like these run a dime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14809,303,451,11763,534,14810,14811,1796,3650],"class_list":["post-22791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-art","tag-fed","tag-janet-yellen","tag-mn-gordon","tag-monetary-policy","tag-pseudoscience","tag-us-capital-hill","tag-us-congress","tag-us-federal-reserve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22791"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22792,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22791\/revisions\/22792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}