Has the Fed been a failure?

[Quantum Windbag]

Anyone care to bet how many people will answer without reading the paper?

As the one-hundredth anniversary of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act approaches, we assess whether the nation’s experiment with the Federal Reserve has been a success or a failure. Drawing on a wide range of recent empirical research, we find the following: (1) The Fed’s full history (1914 to present) has been characterized by more rather than fewer symptoms of monetary and macroeconomic instability than the decades leading to the Fed’s establishment. (2) While the Fed’s performance has undoubtedly improved since World War II, even its postwar performance has not clearly surpassed that of its undoubtedly flawed predecessor, the National Banking system, before World War I. (3) Some proposed alternative arrangements might plausibly do better than the Fed as presently constituted. We conclude that the need for a systematic exploration of alternatives to the established monetary system is as pressing today as it was a century ago.

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/WorkingPaper-2.pdf

More at Reason.

Delete the Fed - Reason.com

 

[Avorysuds]

Seeing that it failed to meet a single goal it claimed it would achieve before it was created and in fact made things much worse, yes, the FED-R has failed. The FED-R in conjunction with corrupted politicians is the reason for mal-investment so deep that we can't even discuss life without overwhelming deficits, when we tried all we get is name calling, fights, racist accusation and ignorance displayed on epic levels.

And your link didn't work for me.

 

[jasonnfree]

Anyone care to bet how many people will answer without reading the paper?

As the one-hundredth anniversary of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act approaches, we assess whether the nation’s experiment with the Federal Reserve has been a success or a failure. Drawing on a wide range of recent empirical research, we find the following: (1) The Fed’s full history (1914 to present) has been characterized by more rather than fewer symptoms of monetary and macroeconomic instability than the decades leading to the Fed’s establishment. (2) While the Fed’s performance has undoubtedly improved since World War II, even its postwar performance has not clearly surpassed that of its undoubtedly flawed predecessor, the National Banking system, before World War I. (3) Some proposed alternative arrangements might plausibly do better than the Fed as presently constituted. We conclude that the need for a systematic exploration of alternatives to the established monetary system is as pressing today as it was a century ago.

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/WorkingPaper-2.pdf

More at Reason.

Delete the Fed - Reason.com

I'm waiting for your summary of the article in your own words first.

 

[jasonnfree]

Seeing that it failed to meet a single goal it claimed it would achieve before it was created and in fact made things much worse, yes, the FED-R has failed. The FED-R in conjunction with corrupted politicians is the reason for mal-investment so deep that we can't even discuss life without overwhelming deficits, when we tried all we get is name calling, fights, racist accusation and ignorance displayed on epic levels.

And your link didn't work for me.

The link worked for me, was a little lengthy, and I'm waiting for QW's summary of the article first. I think the fed has eliminated the boom and bust cycles the country had before. With only 1 depression. What would replace it? The gold standard?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Seeing that it failed to meet a single goal it claimed it would achieve before it was created and in fact made things much worse, yes, the FED-R has failed. The FED-R in conjunction with corrupted politicians is the reason for mal-investment so deep that we can't even discuss life without overwhelming deficits, when we tried all we get is name calling, fights, racist accusation and ignorance displayed on epic levels.

And your link didn't work for me.

The link worked for me, was a little lengthy, and I'm waiting for QW's summary of the article first. I think the fed has eliminated the boom and bust cycles the country had before. With only 1 depression. What would replace it? The gold standard?

You feel that the Fed did something that the data clearly indicates did not happen? If it works that way, can I simply feel that there are no regulations to make it true?

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Anyone care to bet how many people will answer without reading the paper?

As the one-hundredth anniversary of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act approaches, we assess whether the nation’s experiment with the Federal Reserve has been a success or a failure. Drawing on a wide range of recent empirical research, we find the following: (1) The Fed’s full history (1914 to present) has been characterized by more rather than fewer symptoms of monetary and macroeconomic instability than the decades leading to the Fed’s establishment. (2) While the Fed’s performance has undoubtedly improved since World War II, even its postwar performance has not clearly surpassed that of its undoubtedly flawed predecessor, the National Banking system, before World War I. (3) Some proposed alternative arrangements might plausibly do better than the Fed as presently constituted. We conclude that the need for a systematic exploration of alternatives to the established monetary system is as pressing today as it was a century ago.

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/WorkingPaper-2.pdf

More at Reason.

Delete the Fed - Reason.com

Reality check: USA has led the world economies since creation of The FED. even during the great recession, it is the USA the world looks to. Any fair-minded and openminded person would call that a wild success.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Anyone care to bet how many people will answer without reading the paper?

As the one-hundredth anniversary of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act approaches, we assess whether the nation’s experiment with the Federal Reserve has been a success or a failure. Drawing on a wide range of recent empirical research, we find the following: (1) The Fed’s full history (1914 to present) has been characterized by more rather than fewer symptoms of monetary and macroeconomic instability than the decades leading to the Fed’s establishment. (2) While the Fed’s performance has undoubtedly improved since World War II, even its postwar performance has not clearly surpassed that of its undoubtedly flawed predecessor, the National Banking system, before World War I. (3) Some proposed alternative arrangements might plausibly do better than the Fed as presently constituted. We conclude that the need for a systematic exploration of alternatives to the established monetary system is as pressing today as it was a century ago.

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/WorkingPaper-2.pdf

More at Reason.

Delete the Fed - Reason.com

Reality check: USA has led the world economies since creation of The FED. even during the great recession, it is the USA the world looks to. Any fair-minded and openminded person would call that a wild success.

Like I said, "Anyone care to bet how many people will answer without reading the paper?"

 

[oldfart]

Anyone care to bet how many people will answer without reading the paper?

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/WorkingPaper-2.pdf

Reality check: USA has led the world economies since creation of The FED. even during the great recession, it is the USA the world looks to. Any fair-minded and openminded person would call that a wild success.

Like I said, "Anyone care to bet how many people will answer without reading the paper?"

I've read the paper. The biggest take-away is that you apparently have not. It's one of the sloppiest piece of non-analysis to come out of the Cato Institute, which is famous for this drivel. The authors spend most of their time saying that they are not saying what they are saying. For example:

we find the following:.... (3) Some proposed alternative arrangements might plausibly do better than the Fed as presently constituted.

These findings do not prove that any particular alternative to the Fed would in fact have delivered superior outcomes: to reach such a conclusion would require a counterfactual exercise too ambitious to fall within the scope of what is intended as a preliminary survey.

The findings do, however, suggest that the need for a systematic exploration of alternatives to the established monetary system, involving the necessary counterfactual exercises, is no less pressing today than it was a century ago.

TRANSLATION: This paper is acknowledged by the authors as total bullshit. If an academic reads it, we claim only that the subject deserves more study [Duh, name an economic issue that doesn't!] If an ideologue reads it, they will confuse our paper with a claim that the Fed is a failure, which we have gone to great lengths to imply but not state as that would require a counterfactual which we said we were not doing (to keep us from being laughed out of the economics profession, which we realize probably is too late as the only place we could get a job is the 5% of the jobs controlled by the bat-shit crazy "Austrian school").

So OP:

1. Have YOU read the paper?

2. Where in the paper do the authors state that the Fed has been a failure? I'll help you out.

The Federal Reserve has, by all accounts, been one of the world‘s more responsible and successful central banks.

 

[jasonnfree]

Seeing that it failed to meet a single goal it claimed it would achieve before it was created and in fact made things much worse, yes, the FED-R has failed. The FED-R in conjunction with corrupted politicians is the reason for mal-investment so deep that we can't even discuss life without overwhelming deficits, when we tried all we get is name calling, fights, racist accusation and ignorance displayed on epic levels.

And your link didn't work for me.

The link worked for me, was a little lengthy, and I'm waiting for QW's summary of the article first. I think the fed has eliminated the boom and bust cycles the country had before. With only 1 depression. What would replace it? The gold standard?

You feel that the Fed did something that the data clearly indicates did not happen? If it works that way, can I simply feel that there are no regulations to make it true?

What's your summation of the article is what I was asking. We can all find articles pro the fed, and anti the fed. I did ask the question what would replace the fed?

 

[iamwhatiseem]

84 pages?
Uh....

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The link worked for me, was a little lengthy, and I'm waiting for QW's summary of the article first. I think the fed has eliminated the boom and bust cycles the country had before. With only 1 depression. What would replace it? The gold standard?

You feel that the Fed did something that the data clearly indicates did not happen? If it works that way, can I simply feel that there are no regulations to make it true?

What's your summation of the article is what I was asking. We can all find articles pro the fed, and anti the fed. I did ask the question what would replace the fed?

I asked a really simple question, is the Fed a failure? The closest you got to answering that was you stating your feeling that the Fed has slowed down the boom and bust cycles of the economy, which is absurd, as they have been happening more and more frequently.

Why does me asking if the Fed is a failure presume that I be able to replace it? Are you trying to argue with someone else?

The simple fact is that the Fed operates on the dual assumption that our economy is independent of the rest of the world and that Keynes Ian monetary policies work. Even if the latter were true, the former has been proven to be completely false. Nothing one country can do is going to have a significant affect on the word economy, and we should stop pretending it does. Even the G-20 citing in concert cannot dominate the entire world.