Max Sawicky wrote:
>
> Nathan says people elevate the Fed because they
> hate Clinton, meaning their analysis is an artifact
> of their politics...
Hmmm...but in the play of politics, analyses generally are artifacts of partisan positions. Though I think Nathan is wrong _if_ he sees the importance you or Doug give the Fed as being solely driven by an animus toward Clinton. But there's more than one track here. And I got a couple of questions:
People do hype the Fed's role precisely because it can advance a partisan agenda - Clinton didn't really do anything or Clinton lied about his role, etc. But it also feeds those who trumpet the virtues of the market or the effectiveness of monetary over fiscal policy, etc. I wonder how the salience of Greenspan's role will play out in the poltical arena. Has monetarism won? What role can be pitched for fiscal policy if the bankers are held to have delivered the goods?
And assuming that economic analysis can be relatively detached from a political agenda (and in these pomo times that might be characterizecd as a tossing of an unsubstantiated assertion, merrily so), uh, has monetarism won? If infrastructure spending, tax expenditures, wage hikes, etc. have played either no or a small role, has the ghost of Keynes been vanquished?
Dennis Breslin