[PEN-L:28425] Re: Re: The D word surfaces

[Bill Lear <rael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday, July 23, 2002 at 20:24:12 (-0700) Devine, James writes:
>Bill, sorry about your tired fingers, but I think you're missing the point
>of the discussion between Doug and myself. That's okay, since I didn't
>really understand it either and got bogged down in detail. I quoted Epstein
>& Ferguson to the effect that monetary policy hadn't been applied because of
>bank influence, agreeing with what you say below. On the other hand, Doug
>was saying that it was applied -- since the discount rate fell a lot -- but
>didn't work. As far as I'm concerned, both can be true: I don't think
>monetary policy works well at all in situations like 1929-32 or 2001-?. On
>the other hand, I don't think it was even tried in 1929-32. Both of these
>are strikes against the MF, since his theory is that (a) monetary policy
>rules the roost; and (b) if intelligent people like him run monetary policy,
>it will prevent depressions and similar mishaps.

I guess I was replying to Doug's statement that "Friedman wants to
blame the depression on the Fed".  I did not see your previous post
which cited E&F.


Bill