Tape 157 - Election Consequences, Media, Money Supply
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- | Hello, this is William Clark of the Chicago Tribune, | 0:02 |
welcoming you, again, on behalf | 0:06 | |
of Instructional Dynamics, Incorporated, | 0:07 | |
to a visit with the distinguished economist, | 0:10 | |
Professor Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago. | 0:12 | |
And we're recording this interview | 0:15 | |
on November 6th, Wednesday, November 6, 1974. | 0:17 | |
Which of course, is the day after | 0:22 | |
the November 5th elections. | 0:23 | |
And, Dr. Friedman, I think the obvious first question | 0:26 | |
is to ask you about your thoughts | 0:29 | |
on the meaning and the consequences of yesterday's election. | 0:31 | |
- | I think the meaning is much harder | 0:35 |
to interpret then the consequences. | 0:36 | |
The distinction I'm making is the following one, | 0:40 | |
that it's hard to know whether the meaning | 0:43 | |
of this election is that the American people | 0:45 | |
have in fact, given a firm mandate to Congress, | 0:48 | |
to produce more inflation. | 0:52 | |
Or whether, the meaning of this election is simply, | 0:54 | |
that fed up with Watergate, with the high present inflation, | 0:58 | |
affected by the general tendency to blame the White House | 1:02 | |
for whatever happens, regardless | 1:05 | |
of what the source of it is. | 1:07 | |
The public has just expressed a general reaction | 1:09 | |
of unease, of opposition to what was in. | 1:12 | |
Of a rejection of President Nixon and all his works. | 1:17 | |
I rather suspect the latter is the true meaning | 1:21 | |
of the election, but I believe the consequences | 1:24 | |
will be what the first meaning suggests. | 1:27 | |
That is to say if you were a returning Congressman, | 1:29 | |
if you were a returning Senator, | 1:32 | |
if you had listened to what your fellow candidates | 1:34 | |
had been saying on the stump, | 1:38 | |
I think you would go back to Washington saying, | 1:40 | |
the people want us to be sure | 1:43 | |
to reduce unemployment as soon as we can, | 1:45 | |
the people are fed up with inflation, | 1:48 | |
but they don't want, they are not willing | 1:50 | |
to support less inflation via less government spending. | 1:52 | |
I rather think that if I were a returning Congressman, | 1:58 | |
I would read the mandate of the people | 2:01 | |
that the people have instructed us | 2:02 | |
to spend more, not to raise taxes. | 2:05 | |
Now, the people have not explicitly | 2:08 | |
drawn the conclusion from those two statements. | 2:11 | |
But there is only one logical conclusion. | 2:14 | |
How can you spend more and not raise taxes? | 2:16 | |
Fundamentally, the only way you are likely to do it | 2:20 | |
is by imposing the hidden tax of inflation, | 2:23 | |
by printing money to pay for the difference. | 2:26 | |
I think Congress will take that message, | 2:29 | |
I shall not be surprised if the Federal Reserve System | 2:31 | |
takes the same message. | 2:34 | |
So that I interpret the true significance | 2:36 | |
of the election, that it is another firm push forward | 2:38 | |
on the road to higher and higher government spending. | 2:43 | |
To more and more government intervention | 2:46 | |
into the economy, and to higher rates of inflation. | 2:48 | |
I don't think that will occur overnight, | 2:53 | |
as I've mentioned before, I believe the immediate | 2:55 | |
prospect is for a tapering off of the rate of inflation | 2:57 | |
and these things take time, there are legs involved, | 3:00 | |
it will be next year before they get around | 3:03 | |
to voting the spending, it will be the year after that | 3:05 | |
before the spending occurs. | 3:07 | |
I don't wanna predict the precise time table. | 3:09 | |
But consider, for example, just one issue. | 3:13 | |
We have been moving on a road towards socialized medicine. | 3:16 | |
Medicare and Medicaid were big steps on that road. | 3:20 | |
The proposed National Health Insurance | 3:24 | |
is another major step down that road. | 3:26 | |
Is there anything to stop it right now? | 3:29 | |
Where is there any strong, coordinated, | 3:31 | |
effective opposition to that move? | 3:35 | |
I don't see it, so it seems to me, | 3:38 | |
that one of the few things you can assert | 3:40 | |
with almost complete certainty, | 3:42 | |
is that within the next decade or so, | 3:45 | |
maybe less, maybe more, the United States | 3:46 | |
will have a completely socialized medical system. | 3:49 | |
Now, I'm not saying that because I think it's desirable, | 3:52 | |
on the contrary, I think it's disastrous. | 3:54 | |
I think the result will be to make our medical system | 3:56 | |
much less effective and much more erratic | 4:00 | |
in its incidents than it presently is. | 4:06 | |
If we look at the experience of Great Britain | 4:07 | |
under socialized medicine, it has not | 4:09 | |
been a happy experience at all. | 4:11 | |
But I'm not now talking about what's desirable, | 4:13 | |
but what's likely, and the question is, | 4:15 | |
where can you see, what trends can you see, | 4:17 | |
in the picture which will stop us | 4:20 | |
going to socialized medicine? | 4:21 | |
What trends do you see in the picture | 4:23 | |
which will stop Congress from enacting | 4:25 | |
a very large so-called public employment program? | 4:27 | |
The latest fad, I shouldn't say the latest, | 4:31 | |
it's a replay of the Public Works Administration | 4:33 | |
and the Works Progress Administration of the late New Deal. | 4:37 | |
That's exactly what the public employment program is. | 4:41 | |
But what chance do you see now of stopping it? | 4:43 | |
The only bit of hope I can see in this picture, | 4:46 | |
it's only my natural optimism that forces me | 4:51 | |
to dig so deep to see such a bright light, | 4:53 | |
is that with the kind of overwhelming majorities | 4:57 | |
the Democrats will have in the House and the Senate, | 4:59 | |
with the kind of veto-proof Congress it will be, | 5:02 | |
the responsibility for these measures | 5:07 | |
will be clearly placed. | 5:09 | |
If in the next couple of years we have, | 5:11 | |
as I expect we shall have, an outburst of spending. | 5:13 | |
If we have a very expensive monetary policy. | 5:17 | |
If this, in turn, results in inflation, | 5:24 | |
it will be clear who is responsible. | 5:27 | |
But I have to temper even that optimistic note | 5:29 | |
by suggesting that that you'd one, | 5:34 | |
look very closely at the time pattern involved. | 5:35 | |
The probability is that the inflationary consequences | 5:39 | |
will be reaped after the next election, not before. | 5:42 | |
Whereas the expansionary effects | 5:45 | |
will be reaped before and not after. | 5:47 | |
I recently was setting down the dates | 5:49 | |
at which, in the past 15 years, | 5:53 | |
attempted cures for inflation were stopped | 5:58 | |
and replaced by expansionary, monetary and fiscal action. | 6:00 | |
And those are very interesting dates. | 6:03 | |
They are 1963, 1967, 1971, they are exactly | 6:06 | |
four years apart, each one is in the year | 6:13 | |
preceding a presidential election. | 6:16 | |
And it now looks as if 1975 is gonna | 6:18 | |
be the fourth in that series. | 6:21 | |
And interestingly enough, if we push back | 6:24 | |
and ask, how did it happen in 1959? | 6:26 | |
Was it in the series? | 6:30 | |
It was because of the accident | 6:31 | |
which I have mentioned before on these tapes, | 6:33 | |
that we had a non-political president, | 6:35 | |
Dwight Eisenhower, who was perfectly willing | 6:37 | |
to sacrifice his possible successor | 6:40 | |
in order to break the back of inflation. | 6:44 | |
And he succeeded. | 6:48 | |
The only occasion on which we have | 6:49 | |
really broken the back of inflation | 6:51 | |
was in 1960 when we got | 6:53 | |
inflationary expectation down to zero. | 6:55 | |
We were ready to start out on a path | 6:57 | |
of no inflation and healthy growth, | 7:00 | |
but in 1963, the year before the '64 election, | 7:01 | |
we had the tax cut, we had big increase | 7:05 | |
in government spending, we had | 7:08 | |
a move toward easy money policy. | 7:09 | |
And the same thing happened in 1967, '71, | 7:12 | |
and now as I fear, '75. | 7:15 | |
And, so it may well be that this | 7:18 | |
possible favorable effect, we will | 7:20 | |
have to wait till 1978 before we can see any effects of it. | 7:22 | |
- | I wonder where that will put President Ford in 1976. | 7:28 |
The timing of those developments. | 7:32 | |
- | The timing of those developments | 7:33 |
will put President Ford, in one sense, in a good position. | 7:35 | |
In another sense, in a very bad position. | 7:41 | |
Because, what will happen between now and then? | 7:43 | |
He would have been vetoing these spending measures. | 7:45 | |
- | Yes, I see. | 7:49 |
But a Democratic Congress, a democratic | 7:50 | |
presidential nominee will be able to say, | 7:53 | |
well you see, look you're back | 7:55 | |
on a prosperous course, why? | 7:57 | |
Because we passed these things over President Ford's veto. | 7:59 | |
On the other hand, if the effect is, | 8:03 | |
that the economy has expanded | 8:06 | |
and is expanding at that time, is booming. | 8:08 | |
Even though inflation may be somewhat rising, | 8:11 | |
the general tendency to favor the White House | 8:14 | |
and give him the credit, will be | 8:17 | |
a good feature for President Ford. | 8:18 | |
I think it's a, so I really don't, | 8:21 | |
don't have any strong predictions on that matter. | 8:23 | |
- | Any national election always heightens interest | 8:26 |
in the influence and position of the media. | 8:29 | |
You have a letter, Milton, which is | 8:32 | |
two or three months old, here. | 8:36 | |
But the question it raises | 8:38 | |
is certainly very pertinent today. | 8:40 | |
The writer, Mr. J. Allen Rudolph, | 8:42 | |
recalls that at one time you said something | 8:46 | |
to the effect that, a quote if they, the media, | 8:48 | |
succeed in driving him, referring to President Nixon, | 8:52 | |
out of office, it will be impossible | 8:55 | |
for them to not to continue to use this newfound power. | 8:58 | |
I wonder what your thoughts on that are today? | 9:04 | |
- | Well, I think it's a very pertinent question today | 9:06 |
and I think we've been having an example | 9:10 | |
of the phenomenon I was referring to. | 9:14 | |
It seems clear to me that the major cost | 9:16 | |
to the nation of the whole Watergate episode, | 9:20 | |
has been the extraordinary power, | 9:23 | |
which it has demonstrated that the media have. | 9:26 | |
They had this power all along. | 9:29 | |
They didn't really recognize it. | 9:31 | |
But it's perfectly clear that the key factor | 9:33 | |
which finally drove President Nixon out of office, | 9:36 | |
I don't mean to say that what he did | 9:38 | |
was not reprehensible, or warrant things, | 9:40 | |
I'm not condoning any of his behavior. | 9:42 | |
And yet it is perfectly clear | 9:45 | |
that it was the continuous, vehement, | 9:48 | |
day after day attacks by the media | 9:52 | |
that finally drove him out of office. | 9:55 | |
That converted what was really a minor misdemeanor | 9:58 | |
from any point of view or broad perspective. | 10:01 | |
Into what people call, in a way, | 10:04 | |
that it just seems to me as incredible, | 10:06 | |
they call it the greatest crime of the century, | 10:08 | |
the worst thing that ever happened to this country. | 10:10 | |
It's incredible, as I've say over and over again, | 10:11 | |
I hold Nixon's imposing price and wage controls | 10:13 | |
on August 15, 1971 against him | 10:17 | |
far more than i do the whole Watergate incident. | 10:19 | |
And the whole cover up and so on. | 10:21 | |
The first had far more important consequences. | 10:24 | |
But, and in a way it was a far more unprecedented act. | 10:29 | |
The first time it had ever been done in peace time. | 10:33 | |
Whereas at most you could say what was done | 10:35 | |
under Watergate was a slight expansion | 10:37 | |
of things that had been done many times before. | 10:39 | |
Certainly there were many earlier opportunities. | 10:42 | |
If the media had gone after the Bobby Baker case | 10:45 | |
in President Johnson's time. | 10:48 | |
- | Yes, Yes, | 10:50 |
- | People today would not be in the same sense of stupor | 10:51 |
they are when you first mention the word Bobby Baker. | 10:54 | |
They don't recall it. | 10:57 | |
So, and no doubt Mr. Nixon gave 'em cause, | 10:59 | |
but nonetheless, I think you have to say | 11:02 | |
that our fundamental Constitutional | 11:04 | |
system has been changed. | 11:07 | |
We have added, essentially, | 11:09 | |
a fourth branch of government. | 11:10 | |
The fourth of state has also become | 11:12 | |
a fourth branch of government. | 11:13 | |
And it has discovered, that if it makes | 11:14 | |
a sustained attack on any individual, | 11:17 | |
that individual can be driven out of office. | 11:20 | |
It has been flexing its muscles a little | 11:23 | |
with respect to Rockefeller. | 11:25 | |
The same pattern of build-up, of insinuations, | 11:27 | |
of stories, of over-estimating the importance of it, | 11:31 | |
of saying, this, that and the other. | 11:34 | |
I am no friend of Rockefeller | 11:36 | |
on the grounds of his political views and opinions. | 11:37 | |
On the other hand, it again seems to me, | 11:40 | |
that what the media has been saying | 11:43 | |
about his loans and gifts, | 11:45 | |
they've just been building | 11:46 | |
the things up out of all proportion. | 11:48 | |
There was nothing improper in anything he did. | 11:49 | |
On the contrary, you haven't had | 11:51 | |
any emphasis in the media at all, | 11:53 | |
or very little at the fact that he paid | 11:55 | |
some 20 odd million dollars of taxes | 11:57 | |
over those period of years. | 11:59 | |
There was great deal of emphasis | 12:01 | |
on a re-audit of this taxes | 12:03 | |
that raised them by a million dollars. | 12:05 | |
I don't know, but I would be willing to wager you, | 12:07 | |
that were Mr. Rockefeller not now contending | 12:11 | |
for a Vice Presidential campaign, | 12:14 | |
his lawyers would've successfully | 12:16 | |
challenged much of that audit. | 12:18 | |
And the actual extra taxes | 12:19 | |
would have been much less. | 12:21 | |
But Mr. Rockefeller's now in a position | 12:22 | |
where he dare not do that. | 12:24 | |
Just think what the media would say. | 12:26 | |
If instead of Mr. Rockefeller leaning over backward | 12:28 | |
and saying of course I'm gonna pay that million dollars, | 12:30 | |
he had said that million dollars is wrongly assessed, | 12:33 | |
I've instructed my lawyers to fight it | 12:36 | |
and to take it to court and to defend my rights. | 12:37 | |
He would've been pilloried in the press. | 12:40 | |
We have seen a similar kind of thing | 12:43 | |
with respect to Henry Kissinger. | 12:45 | |
You have again had something in the media campaign | 12:48 | |
to get Mr. Kissinger, it's been much more, | 12:51 | |
it hasn't been as stringent, as extreme | 12:54 | |
as the one on Rockefeller recently, | 12:58 | |
because, partly because it's less important | 13:00 | |
from the point of view of a political scene. | 13:04 | |
Now, I'm not talking about the world situation. | 13:07 | |
But, partly, also because, Henry Kissinger | 13:13 | |
has gone out of his way to play up to the media. | 13:16 | |
As has Rockefeller as well, over a long period of time. | 13:19 | |
The interesting thing about it, | 13:23 | |
and that's why both of these cases are so interesting. | 13:24 | |
These are the two men, probably in the Republican party, | 13:27 | |
who, were the greatest favorites | 13:32 | |
of the media people inserted in the abstract. | 13:35 | |
And yet, the media people have not | 13:38 | |
been able to resist the temptation to go after them. | 13:39 | |
And, it may well be, effectively, | 13:42 | |
I will not be surprised if Kissinger has | 13:46 | |
to give up the Secretary of State-ship | 13:48 | |
in the not too distant future. | 13:50 | |
I suspect Rockefeller will be confirmed | 13:52 | |
after the, now that the elections are over. | 13:54 | |
But it's not, by any means, a sure thing. | 13:56 | |
And yet, it is hard to see, if you go back, | 13:59 | |
and look at the situation when he was | 14:03 | |
first appointed, everybody even said, | 14:04 | |
well there's no man in the country, | 14:06 | |
who will more readily get approval. | 14:07 | |
His life has been a public book, | 14:10 | |
open book for the past 20 years. | 14:12 | |
Now, where would it next surface? | 14:15 | |
I don't know. | 14:17 | |
But I do know that any man who wishes to make | 14:19 | |
a career in politics will pay far more attention | 14:25 | |
to the 20, the 30, the 40 people in Washington D.C., | 14:31 | |
who control the outputs on the two evening, | 14:35 | |
three evening news shows. | 14:37 | |
- | Television. | 14:39 |
- | Television. | |
Who are the chief reporters for the New York Times | 14:42 | |
and the Washington Post. | 14:45 | |
He will pay far more attention to them, | 14:47 | |
then he will to his thousands of constituents at home. | 14:49 | |
- | That's an interesting commentary. | 14:54 |
I'm glad you mentioned those specific members of the media. | 14:56 | |
(laughing) | 15:00 | |
- | Oh, I don't mean to be making | 15:01 |
any criticism of any individual person at all. | 15:03 | |
- | No, I understood. | 15:06 |
- | We are all of us behaving | 15:07 |
in accordance with our own position. | 15:08 | |
And I don't mean to say that the members of the media | 15:10 | |
have done this in any deliberate sense at all. | 15:12 | |
I am sure that they are absolutely correct | 15:17 | |
in their indignation. | 15:19 | |
They have hated Nixon all along. | 15:20 | |
And they feel that they were confirmed in their hatred. | 15:23 | |
They feel righteous. | 15:26 | |
But we must remember, that the greatest harm | 15:28 | |
has been done in this world, | 15:31 | |
always by people who were absolutely | 15:32 | |
firmly persuaded of their own right. | 15:37 | |
Who felt that it was essential | 15:39 | |
to override opponents in the name of the good. | 15:42 | |
It is the absolute true believers | 15:46 | |
and the honest fanatics who do the most harm, | 15:50 | |
whether their names, I once made a comment to this effect | 15:52 | |
at a commencement talk I gave | 15:56 | |
at the University of Rochester, | 15:58 | |
and I started saying all the true fanatics | 16:00 | |
and self-believers, and I said whether it be | 16:04 | |
Torquemada, or Hitler, or everybody was with me, | 16:06 | |
or Ralph Nader, at which point there was a dead silence. | 16:10 | |
(laughter) | 16:13 | |
But, that is a good example. | 16:15 | |
- | Yes, it is. | 16:16 |
- | I think Nader has done a great deal of harm. | 16:17 |
But I'm not saying that he's not a sincere, honest man. | 16:18 | |
He's a fanatic. | 16:21 | |
And in the same way, when I say | 16:23 | |
this about the news media, I'm not questioning | 16:25 | |
their motives, I'm not questioning their honesty, | 16:27 | |
or their integrity or anything like that, | 16:29 | |
I'm only saying, that one of things | 16:31 | |
that history demonstrates is that | 16:33 | |
if power exists it will be used. | 16:36 | |
It is hard to find anywhere in history | 16:40 | |
a case where somebody or some group had power | 16:42 | |
and they deliberately avoided using it. | 16:44 | |
- | That's right, that's an interesting commentary. | 16:47 |
I'd like to ask you, comment on the money supply, | 16:49 | |
Milton, and perhaps get into it by, | 16:52 | |
again, using a letter that was written | 16:55 | |
to you by Mr. Donnelley P. McDonald, | 16:59 | |
who refers to hearing Federal Reserve board | 17:04 | |
member John Sheehan speak. | 17:08 | |
He says, I heard Mr. Sheehan speak in Muncie, Indiana | 17:10 | |
about a year ago, and on that occasion, | 17:13 | |
he said, of course the Fed can stop inflation, | 17:15 | |
all you have to do is read Milton Friedman | 17:18 | |
in order to know that. | 17:21 | |
And then, Mr. Sheehan went on, | 17:22 | |
according to Mr. McDonald, to make remarks | 17:24 | |
similar to those in a clipping | 17:26 | |
of which he sent you. | 17:28 | |
Which reads in part, and this is | 17:29 | |
a direct quote from Mr. Sheehan, | 17:31 | |
were we immediately, we, the Federal Reserve Board, | 17:34 | |
were we immediately to begin acting | 17:37 | |
to squeeze out inflation, there will be 15 | 17:39 | |
to 20% unemployment by the end of the year. | 17:42 | |
There would be 30 to 40% black unemployment, | 17:46 | |
riots in the streets, and perhaps | 17:49 | |
a new form of government. | 17:51 | |
Thus, resolving the problem would be rather simple, | 17:53 | |
rather straight forward and utterly ridiculous. | 17:56 | |
And there is a footnote. | 17:59 | |
Governor Sheehan later commented, | 18:00 | |
this as must be evident as hyperbole | 18:02 | |
used in an informal setting to give emphasis | 18:04 | |
not to make a prediction, as to the serious results | 18:07 | |
that would flow from any sudden | 18:10 | |
and drastic squeeze down in the money supply. | 18:12 | |
Particularly in a situation of | 18:14 | |
world shortages of energy and food. | 18:16 | |
- | Well, that certainly is very pertinent, | 18:19 |
because a crucial question about the money supply, | 18:23 | |
and the one that we have been raising over | 18:25 | |
and over again on these tapes, | 18:27 | |
is whether, the slowdown that appeared in June, | 18:29 | |
is going to continue. | 18:33 | |
Now, let me comment on that on two levels. | 18:36 | |
One a purely technical level, | 18:39 | |
and then get to Mr. Sheehan, who illustrates | 18:41 | |
what I think is the real problem | 18:44 | |
of getting sensible monetary policy. | 18:48 | |
On a technical level, the facts are | 18:53 | |
that a couple of weeks ago, you had a jump in M1, | 18:56 | |
three billion dollars in a week, | 19:00 | |
which almost brought you back | 19:02 | |
to that long period trend, | 19:03 | |
which the Federal Reserve Bank | 19:05 | |
of St. Louis has now superimposed | 19:07 | |
on their weekly money chart. | 19:09 | |
They have a weekly money chart | 19:11 | |
in which they show M1 every week. | 19:13 | |
And they have superimposed on that a trend, | 19:16 | |
going back to 1970, showing the 6.7% | 19:19 | |
roughly rate of rise from 1970. | 19:24 | |
And if you look at that chart, | 19:27 | |
you will see that the actual money supply | 19:29 | |
was hugging around that trend until June, | 19:30 | |
and then came off sharply below, | 19:33 | |
and then this one week rise almost | 19:35 | |
brought it back to the trend, | 19:37 | |
but the week after there was decline, | 19:38 | |
the latest one we have, there was a decline. | 19:41 | |
Which brought it back down again. | 19:43 | |
So that as of now, it is still significantly | 19:45 | |
below that trend and you have to say | 19:48 | |
that since June, there has been | 19:50 | |
an appreciatively lower rate of monetary growth. | 19:52 | |
This would also be true of the M2 series. | 19:55 | |
However, there are a number of technical factors | 19:57 | |
which suggest that you may have a reversal. | 20:01 | |
In the first place, I am told | 20:05 | |
that the revisions that are due to come up | 20:08 | |
for the inclusion of non-member bank figures, | 20:10 | |
are likely to raise the recorded rate of growth | 20:13 | |
over the past few months so that actually | 20:17 | |
money has grown at a faster rate | 20:20 | |
then the published numbers would suggest. | 20:22 | |
In the second place, the base, | 20:25 | |
that is to say, high powered money, | 20:29 | |
currency and reserves, what the Fed controls directly. | 20:31 | |
Has continued to rise, it has shown some retardation, | 20:35 | |
but a much lower retardation than the actual, then M1. | 20:39 | |
This means that the so called multiplier, | 20:44 | |
you see for each dollar a day there are several dollars | 20:46 | |
of deposits and of money supply. | 20:49 | |
That multiplier has been going down. | 20:51 | |
And if it were to return to its earlier level, | 20:54 | |
even though the base kept going at its present level, | 20:56 | |
you would have a more rapid rate | 20:59 | |
of growth of the money supply. | 21:01 | |
Those are the technical reasons. | 21:02 | |
But, underlying those technical reasons | 21:04 | |
is really the fundamental question, | 21:06 | |
which this quotation from Mr. Sheehan raises very sharply, | 21:08 | |
the Fed can control the money supply. | 21:13 | |
As Mr. Sheehan implicitly says, | 21:15 | |
there is no doubt about it. | 21:17 | |
They have not chosen to control the money supply | 21:19 | |
in such a way as to avoid inflation. | 21:22 | |
Why have they not done so? | 21:24 | |
They have not done so, in part, | 21:26 | |
because of their preoccupation with interest rates. | 21:27 | |
There's no doubt that that has affected them. | 21:30 | |
If you ask them now, why did you let | 21:34 | |
the money supply grow so slowly of the past five months? | 21:36 | |
Because, undoubtedly, that slow rate of growth | 21:39 | |
was less than they really intended to produce. | 21:41 | |
The answer they will give you, | 21:43 | |
will be, why look, in the last few months, | 21:44 | |
the interest rates have been coming down anyway. | 21:48 | |
If we had really let the money supply | 21:51 | |
go up at the rate we wanted to, | 21:52 | |
at 4 or 5% instead of 1 or 2%, | 21:54 | |
short term interest rates would have come down still. | 21:57 | |
Sharper, everybody would've announced | 21:59 | |
in the newspapers, the Fed has changed its policy, | 22:02 | |
the market resume, and now, then where would we be? | 22:04 | |
So, despite all their protestations, | 22:08 | |
they are still very much concerned with the money markets | 22:12 | |
in the credit sense and with the interest rates. | 22:15 | |
That's one reason. | 22:17 | |
But surely, the more fundamental reason, | 22:18 | |
is the one that Mr. Sheehan brings out. | 22:21 | |
They have persuaded themselves | 22:24 | |
in the Washington atmosphere along with everybody else | 22:26 | |
in that political atmosphere, | 22:29 | |
that it is not worth reducing inflation, | 22:31 | |
if the cost of it is that you have | 22:36 | |
somewhat higher unemployment. | 22:37 | |
And they have justified their views in that way, | 22:40 | |
if we may take Mr. Sheehan's statements | 22:42 | |
as an indication, by grossly overestimating, | 22:45 | |
in my opinion, the effect of a slower monetary growth rate. | 22:49 | |
A primer level of unemployment. | 22:53 | |
The numbers which Mr. Sheehan throws around, | 22:55 | |
he may say in his footnote, and withdrawn | 22:58 | |
that this is hyperbole, but I didn't notice | 23:01 | |
that he have any other more reasonable numbers. | 23:04 | |
Those numbers come from one place, | 23:07 | |
we know were they come from. | 23:08 | |
They come from American experience from 1929 to '32. | 23:10 | |
They come from the Great Depression. | 23:14 | |
Now, is it really true that what people like myself | 23:16 | |
are asking the Fed to do in order to slow down inflation, | 23:19 | |
is to follow the policies that | 23:22 | |
were followed from '29 to '33? | 23:24 | |
Nothing could be further from the truth. | 23:27 | |
There has been no more severe credit | 23:30 | |
of the policies in the Federal Reserve from 1929 to '33. | 23:32 | |
Then those like myself, who are now urging the Fed | 23:36 | |
to slow down for inflation. | 23:39 | |
What happened from 1929 to '33 | 23:41 | |
was that the quantity of money declined. | 23:43 | |
The Fed deliberately followed policies | 23:46 | |
which had the effect of reducing | 23:49 | |
the quantity of money by a third. | 23:51 | |
None of us had been asking them for that. | 23:52 | |
On the contrary, I criticized the Fed | 23:54 | |
for having swung too far in the last six months. | 23:56 | |
I did want them, it wasn't my idea that they should go | 23:59 | |
to a one or 2% rate of monetary growth. | 24:02 | |
For M1, or a 4% one for M2. | 24:05 | |
All along, it has seemed to me, | 24:09 | |
that the right policy for them to follow, | 24:10 | |
is to go to a rate of monetary growth | 24:12 | |
that they can stick with indefinitely for the long run, | 24:14 | |
which would be something like, 3%, 4% for M1, | 24:17 | |
maybe 5%, 6% for M2. | 24:22 | |
Now, those are rates of monetary growth, | 24:26 | |
which if persisted to, within the course | 24:28 | |
of two or three years bring inflation down | 24:30 | |
to two or 3% at the most, maybe to a little less. | 24:32 | |
And, which would not, in my opinion, | 24:35 | |
involve anything like, the kinds | 24:37 | |
of sharp increases in unemployment, | 24:41 | |
the riots on the street corners and so on, | 24:43 | |
which Mr. Sheehan suggests is likely. | 24:45 | |
But the fact that he thinks in these two terms, | 24:48 | |
and that I fear many another of the Federal Reserve Board | 24:51 | |
does, is not a very encouraging portent | 24:55 | |
for what the future monetary policy is likely to be. | 24:58 | |
We have used Mr. Sheehan as an example, | 25:03 | |
and I don't mean to single him out. | 25:05 | |
The fact is that I think the Federal Reserve Board | 25:08 | |
will read the elections very much as Congress will read it, | 25:14 | |
as the mandate to avoid unemployment. | 25:17 | |
And if they read it that way, then the portents | 25:21 | |
for the future are not very encouraging. | 25:23 | |
- | Thank you very much. | 25:26 |
We've been visiting with Professor Milton Friedman | 25:27 | |
of the University of Chicago. | 25:29 | |
If you subscribers would like to ask questions | 25:31 | |
for Dr. Friedman to answer on future tapes, | 25:35 | |
or suggest subjects for him to discuss, | 25:38 | |
please write to Instructional Dynamics Incorporated, | 25:41 | |
450 East Ohio Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60611. | 25:45 | |
We'll be visiting with Dr. Friedman | 25:51 | |
again in a couple of weeks. | 25:53 |
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