On October 22, Morgan Stanley published a report detailing the concept of price level targeting, a policy that the Fed may adopt if deflationary pressures worsen.
An October 20 working paper from the European Central Bank concludes that the unconventional monetary policies of the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England averted an economic collapse comparable to the Great Depression.
On October 19, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published a brief study of deflation in American history.
Also on October 19, Federal Reserve Board Gov. Elizabeth Duke gave a speech detailing the operation of the Federal Open Market Committee. That same day, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis president Narayana Kocherlakota gave a speech on exactly the same subject.
In an October 18 speech, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta president Dennis Lockhart expressed sympathy for additional Fed easing and the establishment of an explicit inflation target.
And in an October 15 commentary, Nobel Prize winning economist Myron Scholes raised questions about the impact of further quantitative easing by the Fed.
On October 14-16, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston held a conference on monetary policy with papers from many leading experts on the subject. Among those addressing the conference were Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston president Eric Rosengren, and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago president Charles Evans. University of California, San Diego, economist James Hamilton discussed the conference in an October 17 post.
In an October 12 speech, Deutsche Bundesbank president Axel Weber reiterated his view that there is a greater danger that the world’s central banks will tighten monetary policy too late, rather than too soon, thus reigniting inflation.
An October working paper from the Central Bank of Brazil finds that inflation-linked bonds give accurate forecasts of inflation only six months out. After that their predictive power falls and actually becomes negative more than two years out.
I last posted items on this topic on October 14.
Bruce Bartlett is an American historian and columnist who focuses on the intersection between politics and economics. He blogs daily and writes a weekly column at The Fiscal Times. Read his most recent column here. Bartlett has written for Forbes Magazine and Creators Syndicate, and his work is informed by many years in government, including as a senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House. He is the author of seven books including the New York Times best-seller, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (Doubleday, 2006).
