Word: moneyed
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Friedman blames unknowing monetary policy in large measure for the magnitude of the Depression of the 1930s. Partly because so many banks failed between 1929 and 1933, the U.S. supply of money shrank by 33%?and that compounded a worldwide economic collapse. The Federal Reserve, which took a narrow view of its responsibilities, felt itself almost powerless to reverse the tide of events. Not really understanding what should be done, it did practically nothing to offset the contraction of the money supply...
...consequence, in Friedman's view, was that John Maynard Keynes concluded that monetary policy had only a limited impact on economic trends. That led him to underrate the money supply as an economic regulator. Friedman maintains that Keynesian economists made the same error for decades afterward?and indeed, that many still do today. In reality, Friedman argues, the Federal Reserve in the 1930s had ample power to prevent the monetary contraction. "Had the facts been as Keynes assumed them to be," Friedman has written, "I could not hold the views I do about the role of money. Had Keynes recognized...
Today's stubborn inflation, according to Friedman and his adherents, has been greatly magnified by Federal Reserve Board mistakes. From April 1965 to April 1966, the money supply expanded at an abnormally high 9½%-per-year rate, even though inflation was on the rise. Too late, says Friedman, the board reversed itself too emphatically, and caused the "credit crunch" of August 1966. In 1968, the board, fearful that the tax surcharge would overburden the private economy, increased the money supply at an average annual rate of 10%?almost twice the rate that the economy could absorb without inflation. Then...
Friedman's fact-laden criticisms of the Federal Reserve have considerably undermined its once sacrosanct standing as the arbiter of U.S. monetary affairs. Mindful of his formulations, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee has been pressuring the board to expand money supply at a rate of between 2% and 6% a year. The board has refused to go that far. but it has begun providing the committee with quarterly reports explaining its money-supply maneuvers...
...income guarantee. It would provide direct cash grants that poverty-level families could spend any way they pleased. He argues that most current programs to help the poor either wind up aiding the better-off instead or place humiliating restrictions on what the poor can do with the money they...