Matt Yglesias thinks the Fed needs to do more to stimulate the economy:
I’ve had some correspondents suggest that the Fed really does want to be more accommodating but there’s nothing more they can do. That’s certainly not the way recent statements have sounded to me. On the contrary, it seems to me that Ben Bernanke and co. are just
flagrantly ignoring their actual legal mandate to balance considerations of employment, growth, and price stability. If we had five percent unemployment and five percent inflation instead of 10 percent unemployment and no inflation, the Fed would be freaking out. So why not freak out at 10 percent unemployment.
Actually, I’d like an answer to that question. What should the Fed do at this point? When inflation is high, the answer is obvious: if it wants to, the Fed can simply keep raising interest rates until inflation is under control. The sky’s the limit. But the other direction is harder. With interest rates already at zero and trillions of dollars of quantitative easing already in place, what’s left to bring down unemployment? Brad DeLong suggests that the Fed announce a long-term inflation target of 3% instead of 2%, but I haven’t heard a lot of other proposals.
If the answer is even more dramatic quantitative easing, that’s fine. But is it? Inquiring non-economists want to know.
