Archive for Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr.
Gerald P. O’Driscoll is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Money and Inflation: What’s Going On in the World?
Are America and the world at risk for another inflationary episode similar to the 1970s and early 1980s? Or do current low rates of inflation portend low inflation for the foreseeable future? David Wessel revisited this question in his “Capital” column in the February 24, 2011, Wall Street Journal. He correctly stated that the Federal [...]
25May2011 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 6 comments | ContinuedMoney, Inflation, and Rising World Commodity Prices
Chairman Bernanke is being disingenuous about the options foreign central banks and governments have to counteract the Fed’s easy-money policy that threatens a global outbreak of inflation similar to the 1970s.
28Feb2011 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 6 comments | ContinuedThe Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism
“Can we do it again?” asks Amity Shlaes in her introduction to this book. She is asking about the Reagan revolution of the 1980s. In his final chapter George Melloan answers yes. But it won’t be easy because of the great expansion of government in 2008-09. He calls for a new vision of “Supply-Side Prosperity.” [...]
24Nov2010 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedGetting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis and The Housing Boom and Bust
These two books are must-reads for anyone wanting to have a working understanding of the economic and financial crisis. They complement each other and together form a civics lesson for an informed electorate. Economists are prone to write turgid prose and employ a jargon-filled style. Not these two gems. Each author is a deservedly well-regarded [...]
22Sep2010 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedBoom and Bust: Crisis and Response
America has experienced a classic economic boom and bust, which I first chronicled in the November 2007 Freeman. Ill-conceived policies to encourage homeownership channeled cheap credit into housing markets. Land-use and zoning policies restricted the supply of housing in key desirable markets. In The Housing Boom and Bust, Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution has [...]
24Feb2010 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedBoom and Bust: Crisis and Response
America has experienced a classic economic boom and bust, which I first chronicled in “Subprime Monetary Policy,” The Freeman, November 2007, and then updated in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere throughout 2008 and 2009. Stanford Professor John B. Taylor has now written a short, accessible book on the Fed’s easy-money policy: Getting Off Track: [...]
23Nov2009 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 6 comments | ContinuedGreenspan Should Be Shocked by Risky Lending?
Toward the end of his tenure as Fed chairman in early 2006, Alan Greenspan was the object of praise edging at times into adulation. It came from some unlikely sources. Milton Friedman penned an encomium for Greenspan in the pages of the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Greenspan Story: He Has Set a Standard.” After [...]
2Mar2009 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedSubprime Monetary Policy
In recent years monetary policy has been conducted so as to create an expectation that the Federal Reserve will bail out investors when asset bubbles deflate. Investors have come to bank on the Fed’s backing of risky ventures. The recent crisis in the subprime mortgage market is at least partly the outcome of this new [...]
1Nov2007 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedEconomic Freedom: The Path to Development
Economic development has historically been exceptional rather than typical. As Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has observed in The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, capitalism has been successful mainly in the West. Consequently, there are tremendous income disparities around the world. In 2000, real income per person [...]
1Apr2005 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 0 comments | Continued-
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