Tape 34 - Samuelson vs. Friedman
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- | Instructional Dynamics of Chicago | 0:02 |
again brings you Professor Paul Samuelson | 0:04 | |
with his biweekly commentary on economics | 0:06 | |
for the week of August 25. | 0:08 | |
In recent weeks, Professor Samuelson, | 0:10 | |
we've had several inquiries from our subscribers commenting | 0:12 | |
on differing opinions between you and Dr. Milton Friedman. | 0:16 | |
Would you like to comment on that this week? | 0:19 | |
- | I'm sure that the number of the listeners to this tape | 0:21 |
read the Wall Street Journal story | 0:24 | |
on the cassette series of IBI. | 0:28 | |
There was a nice publicity blurb I suppose | 0:32 | |
from the standpoint of the sponsoring company | 0:35 | |
about the cassettes that Professor Friedman makes | 0:38 | |
and the cassettes which I make, | 0:42 | |
and always to have a good story, | 0:44 | |
journalists look for a human interest angle, | 0:47 | |
something exciting. | 0:50 | |
So one of the things that they emphasized was | 0:52 | |
that there are differences of opinion expressed | 0:56 | |
by Professor Friedman and myself. | 0:59 | |
Now that's true, and... | 1:01 | |
I gather from some of the mail that has come in | 1:05 | |
as a result of those, | 1:08 | |
that story, a certain number of new subscribers, | 1:12 | |
that this is considered to be a valuable feature | 1:15 | |
by many subscribers. | 1:19 | |
And so it has been suggested to me that | 1:22 | |
if I can find it in my heart, or I should say in my brain, | 1:24 | |
to find something to disagree with, | 1:28 | |
in the views of my esteemed colleague, | 1:33 | |
then please, | 1:38 | |
don't inhibit yourself, Professor Samuelson, | 1:41 | |
in discussing those differences. | 1:45 | |
I have mixed feelings about that. | 1:49 | |
I like to cater to the public tastes. | 1:51 | |
I believe in consumer's sovereignty, | 1:54 | |
and I realize that an adversary procedure | 1:57 | |
is one way of arriving a truth. | 2:01 | |
For example, we rely upon this in the court rooms. | 2:04 | |
We assume that a fair-minded jury, | 2:07 | |
listening to speakers for different sides of an issue, | 2:10 | |
will not expect from each speaker, | 2:16 | |
from the defense counsel, for example, an unbiased report, | 2:18 | |
they will not expect from the prosecuting attorney | 2:24 | |
an unbiased report. | 2:27 | |
But the theory is | 2:28 | |
that you know where the bias is of the defense counsel, | 2:32 | |
you know where the bias is of the prosecuting attorney, | 2:37 | |
and therefore, the jury, taking those biases into account, | 2:41 | |
and the taking into account the checks and balances | 2:46 | |
of the conflicting viewpoints, | 2:49 | |
will thereby be able to arrive at truth. | 2:52 | |
Now, I suppose this is a good enough system | 2:56 | |
in criminal jurisprudence. | 3:00 | |
I don't know whether it's ever been proved | 3:02 | |
that it's the best of all possible systems. | 3:04 | |
I know that some very learned continental people | 3:07 | |
are absolutely shocked to think that 12... | 3:10 | |
Citizens, | 3:15 | |
lay people, in an English country town, | 3:17 | |
or in an American city, are to pass judgment. | 3:20 | |
They find this very odd. | 3:25 | |
On the other hand, we all know | 3:27 | |
very learned members of the bar, | 3:30 | |
who after a lifetime spent in the courts, | 3:32 | |
have an almost mystical belief in the correctness | 3:35 | |
of a lay jury in arriving on the average in truth. | 3:39 | |
I believe they say that in case of civil cases | 3:44 | |
where a jury tends to be a bit sympathetic | 3:47 | |
and to over award damages, for example, in automobile cases, | 3:49 | |
the jury system may be less than perfectly optimal, | 3:53 | |
but in criminal cases, it just cannot be beat. | 3:57 | |
But we don't use that in scientific discussions. | 4:01 | |
You do not have in the learned journals of physics, | 4:04 | |
the learned journals of mathematics, | 4:07 | |
and I may add in the learned journals of economics, | 4:09 | |
quite this adversary procedure | 4:12 | |
in which each man tries to argue for victory, | 4:14 | |
hoping that the intelligent readers will, | 4:19 | |
through a check-and-balance process, | 4:23 | |
arrive at the best estimate of the conflicting truth. | 4:25 | |
Still... | 4:31 | |
This is not a learned journal, | 4:33 | |
and so, I'm perfectly prepared to, | 4:37 | |
on occasion, when I find something to disagree about, | 4:40 | |
to call attention to it. | 4:46 | |
Fortunately, Professor Friedman and I are very old friends | 4:48 | |
and you might say colleagues and antagonists, | 4:53 | |
so that we can in a very cheerful amiable fashion | 4:57 | |
aim a shaft, one at the other, | 5:02 | |
without taking any particular offense. | 5:05 | |
So, this is a preamble | 5:11 | |
to a possible difference of opinion | 5:15 | |
that exists between an eclectic analyst like myself, | 5:18 | |
in appraising what's going to happen | 5:23 | |
to the economy in the months ahead as compared | 5:25 | |
to a very strong and able advocate | 5:29 | |
of the monetarist position, | 5:33 | |
which is Professor Friedman's position. | 5:35 | |
This comes out, as a matter of fact, | 5:38 | |
in Newsweek article, | 5:42 | |
which Professor Friedman wrote recently, | 5:45 | |
it's a bit longer than his typical | 5:48 | |
once-every-three-weeks column, | 5:51 | |
and it is entitled, | 5:54 | |
Monetary Overkill, or something like that. | 5:58 | |
And in this, Professor Friedman points out | 6:02 | |
that in his opinion, the Federal Reserve has been too tight | 6:05 | |
for too long and that if the Federal Reserve continues | 6:09 | |
in its present tightness for sometime longer, | 6:12 | |
I don't have the article at hand | 6:16 | |
so I can't give you the exact words, | 6:17 | |
and therefore, I maybe in some degree, I hope small degree, | 6:20 | |
misrepresenting those words. | 6:26 | |
But the arguments I recall, | 6:28 | |
it went something like the following, | 6:30 | |
that if they continue the present degree | 6:33 | |
of tightness for too long a time, | 6:35 | |
in the future, then there is a very great risk | 6:38 | |
that we will be in for a recession for a | 6:43 | |
rather serious recession, | 6:48 | |
which could send the rate of unemployment up | 6:50 | |
rather considerably. | 6:54 | |
And so, in accordance with his gradualist position, | 6:56 | |
which many of you will have read | 6:59 | |
and a number of you will have heard, | 7:02 | |
Professor Friedman thinks that it would be better | 7:05 | |
for the Federal Reserve, instead of having | 7:08 | |
the money supply virtually flapped as it seems, | 7:11 | |
at least superficially, to have been since April, | 7:15 | |
it would be better for the Federal Reserve to aim | 7:19 | |
for something like a four to 5% rate of increase, | 7:23 | |
which is the only legitimate long-run average rate | 7:27 | |
of increase in Professor Friedman's opinion. | 7:31 | |
Now it happens that I also write a column for Newsweek, | 7:37 | |
and at the present time, the routine | 7:44 | |
involves Professor Wallach one week, | 7:48 | |
Professor Friedman another week, myself another week, | 7:51 | |
then Professor Wallach, Friedman, Samuelson. | 7:54 | |
So my column, which was begun quite independently | 7:59 | |
of any knowledge of Professor Friedman's column, | 8:03 | |
directed its attention to the concern | 8:06 | |
about overkill and inflation | 8:09 | |
which many people in the financial community share | 8:12 | |
with Professor Friedman. | 8:15 | |
I make a very conscious attempt in these | 8:18 | |
broadcasts, in these cassettes, | 8:23 | |
to avoid as best I can duplication | 8:25 | |
with any financial writing that I may do | 8:30 | |
and in particular, with my Newsweek column | 8:32 | |
because I assume that everybody | 8:34 | |
who has ears also has eyes | 8:37 | |
and that it's easy enough to read, | 8:39 | |
you don't have to subscribe to a cassette series, | 8:42 | |
to read my views as expressed every third week. | 8:45 | |
However, one can do very little in 700 or 800s words | 8:49 | |
and almost always, I am conscious of the feeling | 8:54 | |
that my financial columns have to be rather cryptic | 8:58 | |
and have to be brief, and therefore, | 9:02 | |
I cannot elucidate exactly what I have in mind. | 9:04 | |
I cannot develop the nuances, | 9:07 | |
and sometimes the basic assumptions | 9:09 | |
and analyses that underlie them. | 9:13 | |
And so, it is no duplication, I believe, | 9:15 | |
if I on occasion go more deeply into the reasoning | 9:18 | |
that is in my mind in taking up a position | 9:23 | |
that is expressed in a brief 800 words. | 9:27 | |
Now let me turn to my problem | 9:32 | |
in writing the Newsweek column, | 9:37 | |
which will already have appeared | 9:40 | |
by the time that most of you hear this. | 9:44 | |
I had to first frame the problem, | 9:47 | |
what is meant by | 9:52 | |
an inevitable recession | 9:55 | |
if the Federal Reserve continues | 9:57 | |
the present degree of restraint. | 9:59 | |
As everybody knows in this game, | 10:02 | |
it's very easy to get involved in semantic snarls and games | 10:04 | |
in which everybody can be victorious, | 10:09 | |
each person seems to be disagreeing | 10:13 | |
with the other person, | 10:16 | |
but there's a difference in words. | 10:17 | |
As I recall it, monetarists have, | 10:20 | |
as they say, laid their neck | 10:25 | |
on the chopping block in this regard and... | 10:28 | |
One example of a recession would be this, I think, | 10:33 | |
if the total money, gross national product, | 10:41 | |
were to stand still for a couple of quarters, | 10:44 | |
two, three quarters, | 10:46 | |
and if the rate of price increase very stubbornly | 10:48 | |
can be expected to continue to be at about 4% | 10:52 | |
as we end 1969 and go into 1970, | 10:57 | |
and I may say that there's no difference of opinion here | 11:00 | |
between me and any monetarist who believes | 11:04 | |
that that is likely to be the case. | 11:07 | |
Well, under those circumstances, | 11:09 | |
the real gross national product, | 11:12 | |
the measure of the true growth | 11:14 | |
of real goods and services corrected | 11:17 | |
by the so-called implicit GMP price deflator | 11:20 | |
would have to be falling for | 11:24 | |
two, three quarters at a 4% annual rate. | 11:27 | |
And I must say that | 11:31 | |
that is indeed a wolf at the door | 11:34 | |
and something to be worried about and to deplore | 11:36 | |
two or three quarters of a 4% decrease | 11:40 | |
in the real gross national product. | 11:45 | |
And so at this moment, I'm addressing myself | 11:48 | |
to the considerations which are in my mind as to whether | 11:50 | |
so sharp a decrease is likely | 11:54 | |
and how inevitable it would be, given continuation | 11:59 | |
of the present posture of the Federal Reserve authorities. | 12:05 | |
Now, let me, just thinking loosely, | 12:11 | |
and not even giving you | 12:15 | |
written-down-on-the-back-of-an-envelope estimates, | 12:18 | |
say what seems to me to be indicated | 12:21 | |
from my smelling out of the present atmosphere | 12:24 | |
of the American economy, | 12:29 | |
for the money and real GMP | 12:32 | |
in the next two or three quarters. | 12:36 | |
You recall that the rate of real growth | 12:40 | |
of the gross national product was reported as 2.3% | 12:45 | |
by the Department of Commerce for the second quarter. | 12:49 | |
That's annual rate. | 12:54 | |
That is already a slight drop | 12:56 | |
from the 2.5% annual rate of real growth, | 12:59 | |
which the authorities reported for the first quarter. | 13:03 | |
And one thing needs emphasis is | 13:09 | |
that already, within a year, | 13:13 | |
that is from the time just before the tax surcharge. | 13:16 | |
The second quarter of 1968 | 13:20 | |
to the time that I'm talking about, | 13:22 | |
we've had a very marked reduction | 13:24 | |
in the rate of real growth in the economy. | 13:27 | |
In the second quarter of 1968, | 13:30 | |
according to the official figures, | 13:32 | |
the deflated real rate of growth | 13:35 | |
of the gross national product was over 6%. | 13:38 | |
That was a whopping rate. | 13:41 | |
That was an unmaintainable rate. | 13:43 | |
That was one of the reasons | 13:46 | |
why the votes could be found in Congress | 13:47 | |
to pass the rather unpopular 10% tax surcharge. | 13:52 | |
Well, 2.4% the average of the first half of 1969 is less | 13:57 | |
than half the rate | 14:05 | |
of the pre-surtax period. | 14:07 | |
So whether you attribute this slowdown | 14:11 | |
to monetary policy exclusively, | 14:15 | |
or whether, as I would do, | 14:18 | |
you attribute it both to monetary policy | 14:20 | |
and to fiscal policy, I think the first major fact | 14:24 | |
to emphasize is that those Wall Street smart alecs | 14:28 | |
who say that monetary and/or fiscal policy are ineffective | 14:33 | |
in curbing a modern economy are just plain wrong. | 14:39 | |
The major fact to emphasize, I'm now quoting myself, | 14:43 | |
is that there has been a definite slowdown | 14:46 | |
in the rate of real growth. | 14:49 | |
In my opinion, there will be a further slowdown | 14:51 | |
in the rate of real growth. | 14:55 | |
This will be hidden in the money figures | 14:56 | |
for the third quarter because in July, | 14:58 | |
there was a massive wage increase of federal employees. | 15:00 | |
And so, | 15:05 | |
when we correct for more than 5% annual increase | 15:06 | |
in the GMP price deflator for the third quarter, | 15:11 | |
I will be rather surprised | 15:14 | |
if we have as much as a 2% annual rate of real growth. | 15:16 | |
And as a matter of fact by the fourth quarter of the year, | 15:22 | |
I should not be at all surprised if there was temporarily | 15:25 | |
no real rate of growth at all. | 15:30 | |
So let's suppose we drop from 2.5 to 2.3 | 15:33 | |
to zero, and then, | 15:40 | |
here's where we separate the men from the boys, | 15:43 | |
what is the likely pattern to take place after that date? | 15:45 | |
Now if you are a monetarist who believes | 15:50 | |
that the most important thing to determine | 15:54 | |
what's going to happen today | 15:56 | |
is what has happened six to nine months before, | 15:58 | |
I should suppose you're in a pretty position, | 16:01 | |
sitting pretty, to tell us exactly what you think | 16:04 | |
is going to happen in the first quarter of next year. | 16:07 | |
And I would suppose that | 16:12 | |
that would call for a negative rate of growth, | 16:14 | |
and if by hypothesis the Federal Reserve were | 16:18 | |
to continue what superficially seems | 16:21 | |
to be its very tight posture, | 16:24 | |
as measured by what people believe has been happening | 16:26 | |
to the money supply, then you would conclude | 16:29 | |
that we are in for a real serious recession. | 16:34 | |
Not a mini recession, which of course, | 16:38 | |
by National Bureau standards, | 16:42 | |
was no recession at all, | 16:43 | |
as in the first part of 1967, | 16:46 | |
it just didn't qualify for the ordinary tests | 16:49 | |
that Geoffrey Moore and others apply at the National Bureau | 16:52 | |
to defining a business cycle recession. | 16:55 | |
Well, I'm talking about the prospects | 16:59 | |
for something more than that kind of a non-recession, | 17:02 | |
which might be called a mini recession. | 17:05 | |
Well, I, before going into what's going to happen | 17:10 | |
in the first, second, and third quarter, | 17:14 | |
I would say that on the basis of what I now know, | 17:16 | |
but I must admit, I am assuming that I know something | 17:18 | |
about the way the Federal Reserve is likely | 17:23 | |
to react to each new development from now on. | 17:26 | |
And so, I'm not postulating any simple maintenance | 17:29 | |
of a somehow defined past degree of restraint, | 17:32 | |
but thinking of how they're likely to behave. | 17:37 | |
In fact, my best guest at this time would be | 17:40 | |
that in the first quarter, | 17:44 | |
you would not have a perceptible worsening | 17:47 | |
than a leveling off of the real GMP, | 17:52 | |
and by the middle of 1970, | 17:56 | |
after inventories have run off a little, | 17:59 | |
then I would expect there to be a good chance of some | 18:03 | |
beginning of restoration of expansion. | 18:09 | |
Although, not to the rate of a vigorous expansion | 18:14 | |
such as we've enjoyed for almost 100 months in the 1960s. | 18:18 | |
I may say that such an expansion | 18:23 | |
is called for, I believe, | 18:27 | |
by the Wharton School model of Professor Lawrence Klein, | 18:29 | |
a model which, I think, | 18:33 | |
I don't wish to be unjust, I don't wish to be harsh, | 18:35 | |
but I think has not been predicting very well recently. | 18:37 | |
Well, that model I think calls for a comeback | 18:42 | |
by the middle of 1970, | 18:46 | |
of some substantial degree. | 18:50 | |
I don't really want to pontificate | 18:52 | |
over what's going to happen after the middle of 1970 | 18:55 | |
because my vision doesn't go that far. | 18:57 | |
Now, this brings me to a very interesting point, | 18:59 | |
I must say, to me, a surprising point. | 19:03 | |
I read in the newspaper, got a little hint | 19:05 | |
from one financial columnist in an outright story | 19:10 | |
that the money supply may not in fact have been growing | 19:14 | |
at the rates which the Federal Reserve of St. Louis | 19:17 | |
and other authorities have been reporting | 19:20 | |
to me from week to week, | 19:22 | |
that the Federal Reserve is about to announce | 19:24 | |
that they have overlooked some wrinkle connected | 19:27 | |
with the Eurodollar market, | 19:30 | |
and this will greatly change the profile of money behavior | 19:33 | |
in the months which have just passed. | 19:39 | |
By the time you hear this tape, | 19:44 | |
you may have available to you | 19:47 | |
from the St. Louis Bank, and from the Federal Reserve, | 19:48 | |
and from the daily Financial Press, | 19:51 | |
a detailed confirmation of this story. | 19:53 | |
If I were a monetarist, | 19:58 | |
that would be about as uncomfortable | 19:59 | |
a bit of news as I could imagine | 20:02 | |
because I put great weight, | 20:05 | |
in fact, more weight than on anything else, | 20:07 | |
and more weight than upon everything else put together | 20:09 | |
on what's happening to the money supply. | 20:13 | |
And here I find that while I think, | 20:15 | |
have thought that the money supply has been flat since April | 20:18 | |
and has grown, taking into account the bulge | 20:22 | |
which we know must have been there in April, | 20:24 | |
has grown in the second quarter by, | 20:27 | |
as I would be thinking, by no more than 2%, | 20:30 | |
suddenly, I am told that the actual increase was 4.5%. | 20:33 | |
For a monetarist, a change in information like this | 20:39 | |
will give rise to a most... | 20:44 | |
Emphatic change in prediction | 20:48 | |
because the most important thing, | 20:51 | |
the only thing, practically, | 20:53 | |
that he has upon which to make his prediction | 20:55 | |
has been changed. | 20:57 | |
He would say, | 20:59 | |
I'm sorry, it wasn't my fault | 21:01 | |
that they reported the wrong things to me, | 21:03 | |
but now that I learned | 21:06 | |
they have reported the wrong things to me, | 21:08 | |
I have no choice but to change my diagnosis | 21:09 | |
of what's going to happen. | 21:13 | |
Now, I'm a great believer in changing your opinion | 21:14 | |
upon the basis of new facts. | 21:17 | |
But I want to emphasize, | 21:19 | |
just by way of good natured controversy, | 21:22 | |
is that this bit of news, | 21:27 | |
to me, is just like one of the 20 bits of news. | 21:30 | |
It'll cause me to make some change in my estimates, | 21:34 | |
some change in what I've just described to you. | 21:39 | |
But the way that I make my projections | 21:42 | |
into the future is not based upon | 21:45 | |
primary weight upon any one particular series. | 21:49 | |
And so, if the economy has been strong, | 21:53 | |
and if the real growth, the money supply, | 21:58 | |
has been stronger than earlier was thought, | 22:01 | |
I've already picked up that effect | 22:06 | |
in the initial conditions from which I make my changes. | 22:08 | |
And I have only a small perturbation or alteration | 22:16 | |
to make in my forecast | 22:20 | |
for the months ahead | 22:23 | |
for the quarters ahead, and for the year ahead, | 22:25 | |
based upon what would be a rather extensive redefinition | 22:29 | |
of the stock of money series. | 22:37 | |
Now I've overstated the matter a little bit | 22:40 | |
because as we all know, | 22:44 | |
if I am a monetarist and I am sophisticated, | 22:48 | |
then I really cannot use the money figures | 22:51 | |
as published alone as an invariable | 22:55 | |
multiplicand for my multiplier analysis. | 23:00 | |
I know that Regulation Q, | 23:06 | |
which causes, let's say, a runoff of CDs, | 23:08 | |
causes a distortion in the usual message part | 23:12 | |
of the signal, which is money. | 23:16 | |
We think of a signal as consisting of message and noise, | 23:18 | |
I'm using the language of the theory of information | 23:21 | |
and of the communication engineer | 23:24 | |
involved in optimal filtering, | 23:26 | |
we think of a signal as consisting of message and noise. | 23:29 | |
Then the official-published figure sometimes | 23:33 | |
have more noise in them because | 23:36 | |
of various governmental regulation's interferences. | 23:38 | |
And so, I dare say, | 23:43 | |
even if the money supply figure is changed, | 23:45 | |
those people who rely primarily upon the money supply | 23:48 | |
will think twice before they use the new money figures, | 23:52 | |
including, let's say a Eurodollar adjustment, | 23:56 | |
in their relationships. | 23:58 | |
They may very well do what some of you will recall | 24:00 | |
Professor Friedman chose to do. | 24:04 | |
Since his past historical time series | 24:06 | |
did not certificates of deposits in them, | 24:09 | |
and since he thinks Regulation Q is particularly distortive | 24:12 | |
of certificates of deposits, | 24:16 | |
he has found it useful in this very puzzling recent period | 24:17 | |
to work with a new hybrid time series, | 24:22 | |
which is not the old M1, money narrowly defined, | 24:26 | |
and it is not quite the old M2, money broadly defined | 24:29 | |
to include saving or time deposits in commercial banks, | 24:34 | |
but only certain part of that latter, | 24:38 | |
namely, that part of M2 which does not consist | 24:42 | |
of certificates of deposits. | 24:46 | |
Now let me go back now not to argument, | 24:51 | |
but to matters of substance, | 24:55 | |
what the Federal Reserve has done, | 25:00 | |
what the Federal Reserve should do in the future. | 25:02 | |
And in particular, | 25:05 | |
what it should do, and what we are to think, | 25:07 | |
if I am wrong, | 25:11 | |
and if the economy is about | 25:13 | |
to become a good deal weaker than I think is the case. | 25:16 | |
Let us suppose that I've overlooked and downplayed the fact | 25:20 | |
that money X was a lag and that we have already been | 25:26 | |
so restrictive on money that a good deal | 25:30 | |
of constriction and contraction is inevitably on the way. | 25:32 | |
According to some recalculations | 25:39 | |
that some of my students have made | 25:41 | |
of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis's formulas | 25:44 | |
for how money and lag basis affects the economy, | 25:48 | |
I've asked them just to use the money supply | 25:54 | |
for say five quarters, it's just an accident | 25:58 | |
that they picked five quarters and not the four quarters | 26:01 | |
of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, | 26:03 | |
and to forget about fiscal variables and other variables. | 26:07 | |
I think this is a very bad method of forecasting. | 26:10 | |
It's so-called reduced form method. | 26:12 | |
I think it will do me in if I use it | 26:15 | |
repeatedly over the years, | 26:18 | |
but in any case, when that is done, | 26:20 | |
it turns out that the patterns gives a great deal of weight | 26:23 | |
to the current quarter. | 26:28 | |
It gives a great deal of weight, | 26:32 | |
not quite as much though, to the last quarter. | 26:33 | |
And the profile of weight going back for four quarters | 26:36 | |
with the fifth quarter made to be zero | 26:41 | |
as a method of technique is almost a straight-line drop. | 26:44 | |
If that's the case, you cannot say | 26:48 | |
what I so often hear said | 26:52 | |
that the data suggests that six to nine months | 26:54 | |
after money is changed do you get the primary effect. | 26:58 | |
Because in the formulas that I'm now quoting, | 27:03 | |
you get most of the effect within the first six months | 27:05 | |
and not with that very long delay. | 27:10 | |
We tried some experiments using eight-period lags | 27:13 | |
to see whether that would push the effects back further | 27:17 | |
and actually, it just makes the effects negative | 27:19 | |
after the fourth quarter. | 27:22 | |
That's one experiment I want to call to your attention. | 27:26 | |
It has great significance 'cause it means | 27:29 | |
if the Federal Reserve does change its mind, all is not lost | 27:31 | |
because there would still be time to change things. | 27:35 | |
Now, I wanna wind up, saying the following. | 27:38 | |
Many monetarists I believe have been very critical | 27:43 | |
of the Federal Reserve for being too tight in 1966 | 27:46 | |
and having caused the 1967 pause. | 27:49 | |
Question I would like to ask is this. | 27:53 | |
From the standpoint of a Nixonite, | 27:56 | |
from the standpoint of the current administration, | 27:59 | |
I'm thinking of Paul McCracken and Herbert Stein, | 28:01 | |
and Hendrik Houthakker, the Council of Economic Advisers, | 28:03 | |
so I'm thinking of Arthur Burns, | 28:05 | |
why wasn't the 1967, the first part of the year, | 28:07 | |
pause, a dandy thing, exactly what was aimed for? | 28:12 | |
And so why again, to quote myself, | 28:16 | |
why wouldn't in the troika, in the quadriad, | 28:19 | |
these are the names of the technical meetings | 28:23 | |
in the new administration, | 28:27 | |
why wouldn't there be hallelujah and hosannas | 28:29 | |
if only Paul McCracken could pull off this time, | 28:31 | |
at the beginning of 1970, a pause just like that of 1967? | 28:34 | |
No better and no worse. | 28:40 | |
I'll remind you that unemployment | 28:42 | |
did not go up a great deal, | 28:43 | |
unemployment minority people did not go up a great deal, | 28:45 | |
and yet there apparently was a considerable amount | 28:48 | |
of relief in the price index. | 28:51 | |
And so, if I were a monetarist, | 28:53 | |
I would not be so critical of that part of the period. | 28:55 | |
Thank you. | 28:58 | |
- | Thank you, Professor Samuelson. | 28:59 |
If you have questions or comments, | 29:01 | |
send them to Instructional Dynamics Incorporated, | 29:03 | |
166 East Superior Street, Chicago 60611. | 29:06 |
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