Tape 112 - Economic Outlook for 1973
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Clark | Hello, this is William Clark, | 0:02 |
of the Chicago Tribune, welcoming you, | 0:03 | |
once again, on behalf of Instructional Dynamics | 0:05 | |
to another visit with the eminent economist | 0:08 | |
professor Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago. | 0:10 | |
We're recording this interview on November 29, 1972. | 0:14 | |
And Dr. Friedman, your friends at Instructional Dynamics | 0:19 | |
have asked that you devote your remarks today | 0:23 | |
to talking about what things are going to be like in 1973. | 0:26 | |
Friedman | Well that's certainly a request | 0:31 |
that's natural at this time of the year | 0:34 | |
as December approaches, and we have been having | 0:36 | |
a spate of such forecasts from other groups. | 0:39 | |
One of the interesting things about this | 0:44 | |
particular year's forecasts is that they are | 0:46 | |
extraordinarily homogeneous. | 0:48 | |
Everybody is saying exactly the same thing: | 0:51 | |
that 1973 is going to be a continuation of 1972, | 0:53 | |
that it's gonna be an extremely good year, | 0:58 | |
that output will be rising at the rate | 1:01 | |
of about five and a half, 6%, | 1:04 | |
that prices will be raising at the rate | 1:08 | |
of maybe 3% so the total GNP will be rising | 1:10 | |
at the rate of about 9%. | 1:13 | |
That's not only the consensus, it's the forecast. | 1:16 | |
Everybody is saying exactly the same thing. | 1:20 | |
Now the interesting question is to ask, | 1:23 | |
"What underlies this forecast? | 1:25 | |
What's the basis for it?" | 1:28 | |
And as you study the various bases, | 1:31 | |
it's very hard to see a great deal | 1:33 | |
underlying that forecast outside of inertia. | 1:35 | |
The economy expanded in 1971. | 1:38 | |
It has been expanding in 1972, | 1:42 | |
and it's more or less a expectation | 1:45 | |
of a continued expansion in '73 | 1:47 | |
that underlies the forecast. | 1:51 | |
If you look further beyond that, | 1:52 | |
the fiscalists have been stressing | 1:55 | |
the fact that there will be | 1:58 | |
a fairly substantial deficit in 1973. | 1:59 | |
However, what matters from that point of view | 2:04 | |
is really not accepting, entirely, | 2:08 | |
their own conclusion, their own approach. | 2:10 | |
It's not the size of the deficit | 2:13 | |
but its relation to the deficit of 1972. | 2:15 | |
And while the deficit in '73 will | 2:19 | |
certainly be large, and maybe somewhat larger | 2:21 | |
than in '72, it's by no means clear that it will be. | 2:24 | |
That partly depends on what success | 2:27 | |
President Nixon has in trimming down | 2:30 | |
the budget according to his | 2:33 | |
very well-publicized desire to do so. | 2:35 | |
[chuckle] | 2:37 | |
Clark | Yeah. | 2:37 |
Friedman | The monetarists, on the other hand, | 2:38 |
point to the fact that if you take | 2:40 | |
year-by-year changes in quantity of money, | 2:42 | |
they have been of the order of 6% | 2:47 | |
and, therefore, the narrow money supply. | 2:51 | |
And the Fed has expressed the view | 2:54 | |
that it desires to keep it at 6%. | 2:56 | |
And this is, indeed, a relevant basis | 2:58 | |
for supposing that if you have money | 3:02 | |
increasing at around 6% per year, | 3:06 | |
the nominal GNP, or national income, | 3:09 | |
will increase something at the rate of 8 to 9% | 3:13 | |
since 2 to 3% increase in velocity | 3:16 | |
is not abnormal for this stage of an expansion. | 3:20 | |
Velocity of M one has been fairly stable. | 3:24 | |
I'm sorry, velocity of M one has been rising | 3:28 | |
in general over the post-war period, | 3:32 | |
but in addition, it tends to rise more | 3:34 | |
during a cyclical expansion and less | 3:37 | |
during a contraction. | 3:39 | |
If you look at M two, it has been going up | 3:40 | |
recently at the rate of 8%, and earlier | 3:43 | |
than that at the rate of about 9% per year. | 3:45 | |
The velocity of M two has been highly stable. | 3:48 | |
It has shown much less fluctuation | 3:51 | |
in the last 10 years than the velocity of M one. | 3:53 | |
And so that, too, is consistent | 3:56 | |
with the GNP rate of growth prediction of 9%. | 3:58 | |
Well I've been describing, essentially, | 4:02 | |
what I think to be the background | 4:04 | |
of the various current forecasts. | 4:05 | |
Whenever you see everybody combined | 4:09 | |
together and come out with the same entry, | 4:11 | |
you have to be suspicious. | 4:13 | |
[chuckle] | 4:15 | |
Friedman | And as I see it, the suspicion, | 4:16 |
we have to recognize that there are | 4:19 | |
really three possible scenarios for next year. | 4:22 | |
Scenario number one is this consensus | 4:26 | |
typical forecast, and I do not believe | 4:29 | |
that you can rule it out. | 4:32 | |
Indeed, I have to confess that I think | 4:34 | |
it is the most likely of any one | 4:36 | |
of the three scenarios. | 4:38 | |
Although I would not say it's likely | 4:40 | |
that I believe it's high as most | 4:41 | |
of the other people who have been talking about the economy. | 4:44 | |
It is, in my opinion, a sensible forecast | 4:48 | |
because of what I've been saying | 4:51 | |
about the monetary developments. | 4:52 | |
If, indeed, the Fed sticks to its guns | 4:55 | |
and does what it says-- more or less | 4:58 | |
it said it's going to do, which is | 5:00 | |
about 6% per year, well then the GNP | 5:03 | |
increase oughtta be about the same | 5:09 | |
as people have been saying: somewhere around 9% per year. | 5:10 | |
However, I would differ from the consensus forecast | 5:14 | |
in the predictions of inflation under those circumstances. | 5:17 | |
Let's suppose that that develops with GNP. | 5:21 | |
Then I expect a higher level of inflation | 5:23 | |
than most people have been expecting. | 5:26 | |
I said in the middle of the year, I think, | 5:28 | |
sometime I've forgotten the exact date | 5:32 | |
May or June, in a Newsweek column | 5:34 | |
that I thought the tapering off | 5:36 | |
of inflation had come to an end. | 5:38 | |
And then from here on out, if anything, | 5:40 | |
we were heading for a higher rate of inflation. | 5:42 | |
Certainly the price statistics | 5:45 | |
that have come out since that day | 5:47 | |
have been entirely consistent with that. | 5:49 | |
If you look at those statistics, | 5:52 | |
they show certainly no further deceleration of inflation. | 5:53 | |
And certainly, if you look at the cost | 5:59 | |
of living statistics, they show some acceleration. | 6:01 | |
Clark | Yes. | 6:04 |
Friedman | Now, of course, everybody goes | 6:04 |
around and says, "Oh, well. But that's just food prices." | 6:06 | |
But, you know, that's not a correct answer. | 6:10 | |
I have emphasized in the past that the effect | 6:15 | |
of wage and price controls, insofar as they | 6:17 | |
have any effects at all, are to shift demand | 6:20 | |
not to reduce it. | 6:23 | |
Given the total aggregate amount of demand, | 6:25 | |
if it's not allowed to come out | 6:27 | |
in one place, it'll come out in someplace else. | 6:28 | |
So you cannot suppose that the behavior | 6:31 | |
of food prices is independent of the downward pressure. | 6:33 | |
And I know that prices-- indeed, | 6:37 | |
I think if you go back and look | 6:39 | |
at the behavior of food prices | 6:40 | |
versus other prices, you will see | 6:42 | |
that there is a curious coincidence | 6:45 | |
between the imposition of the freeze in wage price control. | 6:46 | |
And food price is becoming the culprit | 6:51 | |
for the general rise in prices. | 6:56 | |
Well to go back to the main picture, | 6:58 | |
I think, as I've said on earlier tapes, | 7:01 | |
6% per year was a money ride. | 7:04 | |
And M one was consistent in 1971 | 7:08 | |
with the tapering off of inflation, | 7:14 | |
but it is not consistent with a long | 7:15 | |
period continued 3% per year rate of rise in prices. | 7:18 | |
And the long period will start to show up in 1973. | 7:23 | |
And, therefore, I would expect | 7:30 | |
that if the consensus forecast | 7:32 | |
about GNP does come out to be true, | 7:33 | |
a larger part of it will take the form | 7:37 | |
of prices and a smaller part of it | 7:39 | |
will take the form of output | 7:40 | |
than has been widely anticipated. | 7:42 | |
Now what are the other scenarios? | 7:45 | |
Scenario number one, which as of four months | 7:47 | |
ago, I would have said was overwhelmingly | 7:51 | |
the most likely, would be a much more rapid | 7:54 | |
rate of rise in GNP than the consensus forecast. | 7:58 | |
Four months ago, the Fed was increasing | 8:01 | |
the narrow money supply at the rate | 8:04 | |
of something like seven to 8%. | 8:06 | |
It was increasing the broader | 8:09 | |
money supply at a rate of over 10%. | 8:10 | |
Those were rates which, if they had | 8:13 | |
been continued, would've been certain | 8:15 | |
to accelerate inflation in a much more dramatic | 8:17 | |
and substantial sense than I have just indicated | 8:21 | |
for the consensus forecast. | 8:24 | |
However, three to four months ago, | 8:27 | |
the Fed made a drastic change. | 8:32 | |
And for the past three months, | 8:33 | |
the rate of growth of M one has been | 8:35 | |
about 4% and of M two has been 8%. | 8:37 | |
And, therefore, that's what introduces | 8:41 | |
the third possible scenario, which is | 8:44 | |
of a mini recession in the last half | 8:46 | |
of '73 and the first half of '74. | 8:48 | |
Clark | Hmm. | 8:52 |
Friedman | Now if you listen | 8:52 |
to most forecasters talk about it, | 8:54 | |
they would say that's a pessimistic forecast. | 8:55 | |
Clark | The third scenario? | 8:58 |
Friedman | That's right. | 9:00 |
They would regard the consensus | 9:01 | |
forecast as an optimistic one, and maybe | 9:03 | |
even the accelerating of inflation is an optimistic one. | 9:07 | |
But from my point of view, the best | 9:10 | |
of those three outcomes would be the third scenario. | 9:12 | |
Clark | Why is that? | 9:15 |
Friedman | That's an optimist because it's the only way | 9:16 |
in which you are gonna prevent inflation | 9:18 | |
from resuming its upward path. | 9:20 | |
If we are serious about wanting to get | 9:22 | |
inflation down to 2% a year or less, | 9:25 | |
we cannot do so at present rate-- | 9:28 | |
well, I've gotta stop that. | 9:31 | |
We cannot do so at rates of monetary | 9:33 | |
expansion measured year to year. | 9:35 | |
Let's say a 6% rate for M one, | 9:39 | |
a 9, 10% rate for M two. | 9:42 | |
I halted before because I was starting | 9:45 | |
to say, "We cannot do so at present | 9:48 | |
rates of monetary expansion," but that depends | 9:50 | |
on whether you measure present breaks | 9:52 | |
over the past three months or over the past year. | 9:54 | |
We cannot do so at rates of monetary | 9:57 | |
expansion that have prevailed over the past year. | 9:59 | |
We can do so at rates of monetary | 10:02 | |
expansion that have prevailed over the past three months. | 10:04 | |
I would like to see the Fed continue | 10:08 | |
the rates of monetary expansion | 10:10 | |
that have prevailed over the past three months. | 10:12 | |
If it did so, that would produce | 10:14 | |
a mini recession in the last half of '73 | 10:17 | |
which would continue, presumably, onto the first half. | 10:21 | |
And that would be the best thing in the world | 10:24 | |
because that would provide a little bit more force | 10:26 | |
to the anti-inflation movement. | 10:30 | |
After all, we had something like nine months | 10:32 | |
of really tight money, in the sense | 10:36 | |
of low monetary expansion, in 1969. | 10:39 | |
And we've been living on that capital ever since. | 10:42 | |
How long can you live on nine months? | 10:44 | |
We need to have that capital reinforced. | 10:46 | |
Well, as I say, that third scenario | 10:50 | |
as of three or four months ago | 10:54 | |
I would have given it a very, very low probability. | 10:55 | |
But as of now, I am inclined to take it more seriously. | 10:58 | |
I am inclined to take it more seriously | 11:02 | |
for two very different and, indeed, | 11:04 | |
almost contradictory reasons. | 11:06 | |
The first is the past history of the Fed. | 11:09 | |
Every time in the past when the Fed | 11:13 | |
has moved in the direction of tightening up, | 11:16 | |
it had tended to go too far. | 11:19 | |
The whole record of the Fed has been | 11:21 | |
one of swinging too far in whichever direction it's moved. | 11:23 | |
Well if that pattern were to continue, | 11:28 | |
then the third scenario would certainly develop. | 11:30 | |
And, indeed, it might develop in even a more | 11:35 | |
dramatic form than I have suggested. | 11:37 | |
Now the other reason for believing | 11:41 | |
this is possible that I say is | 11:42 | |
almost the reverse, almost contradictory | 11:44 | |
is that in the past year, the Fed | 11:47 | |
has changed its mode of operation: | 11:50 | |
its acceptance of RPD, reserved | 11:55 | |
behind private deposits as a intermediate | 11:58 | |
target of monetary policy, its far | 12:04 | |
greater emphasis on monetary aggregates | 12:08 | |
in its targets and its stated objective, | 12:10 | |
and an emphasis that seems much realer | 12:17 | |
this time than it has before, much less | 12:19 | |
simply a verbal acceptance much more of a real acceptance, | 12:22 | |
offers the hope that they have really, | 12:28 | |
for the first time, gone onto the right path | 12:30 | |
and have gotten control of what they're controlling. | 12:33 | |
Now given that, why might they continue a 4% rate? | 12:36 | |
Because they are just as aware | 12:41 | |
as I am that the rates that have prevailed | 12:43 | |
over the past year, the 6 and 10 or 12% rates, | 12:47 | |
are not consistent with a 2% inflation. | 12:51 | |
That's no mystery to them. | 12:54 | |
I'm not telling them anything. | 12:55 | |
[chuckle] | 12:56 | |
Friedman | At any rate, if I'm telling them | 12:58 |
anything, they've heard it from me already. | 13:00 | |
You don't need to have a retell. | 13:01 | |
And consequently, it is not at all | 13:05 | |
impossible that that is their objective, as well. | 13:08 | |
That is to say that they are aware | 13:12 | |
that this is the only way to get the economy under control. | 13:16 | |
Now people will say, "But my God! | 13:20 | |
The administration wouldn't like that, | 13:22 | |
even a mini recession. | 13:24 | |
Are you sure?" | 13:25 | |
Put yourself in the position of the administration, | 13:27 | |
and take a long view. | 13:29 | |
Don't look for six months, but look for four years. | 13:30 | |
And ask yourself, where do you wanna be in '76? | 13:33 | |
Do you want in '76 to be in a depression? | 13:36 | |
In a recession? | 13:40 | |
Or do you want in '76 to be in a situation | 13:40 | |
where inflation is accelerating? | 13:44 | |
What choices do you have? | 13:46 | |
If you look at the time's [inaudible] pattern. | 13:48 | |
'73 is the world's best year-- from a political | 13:51 | |
point of view is the best year | 13:55 | |
to add another inflationary counter irritant. | 13:56 | |
[Laughter] | 14:04 | |
Friedman | I wanna say | 14:05 |
anti-inflationary-- | 14:05 | |
Clark | I see. | |
Friedman | Measures. | 14:07 |
After all, you know, the dating | 14:08 | |
is not too bad from the past four years. | 14:09 | |
'69 was a best year, wasn't it? | 14:11 | |
And everybody criticized Mr. Nixon | 14:13 | |
for taking a recession in 1970. | 14:17 | |
But suppose Mr. Nixon had insisted | 14:22 | |
and suppose the Fed had followed | 14:25 | |
his insistence, which is a big if. | 14:26 | |
But suppose they had done it. | 14:30 | |
Suppose instead of the tight money | 14:32 | |
in '69 you had had a rapid increase | 14:33 | |
in the quantity of money. | 14:36 | |
What would have happened? | 14:37 | |
The inflation would have continued to accelerate. | 14:39 | |
You would have been forced a year or two | 14:42 | |
later to have taken very tight measures to try to hold it. | 14:44 | |
You would have run into the '72 election | 14:47 | |
in an economy that was severely recessed or depressed. | 14:51 | |
By taking a recession in 1970, | 14:56 | |
it was perfectly possible for Mr. Nixon | 14:58 | |
to be coming out of it by '72, | 15:00 | |
to be having unemployment going down, | 15:02 | |
and at the same time inflation tapering off. | 15:04 | |
Well now, look ahead at the four year political timetable. | 15:06 | |
When are you gonna have a better opportunity | 15:10 | |
than in 1973 to take a minor recession? | 15:12 | |
Let me emphasize this is all my conjecture. | 15:20 | |
I have no inside word on this. | 15:24 | |
I have not talked to anybody at the White House about it. | 15:25 | |
I am aware on from many sources | 15:29 | |
that what I've described is the pattern for 1968 to '72. | 15:33 | |
That's not entirely a figment of my imagination. | 15:39 | |
I'm sure of that. | 15:42 | |
But I have talked to no one or checked | 15:43 | |
with no one about the '72 to '76. | 15:44 | |
But I think one oughtta proceed | 15:48 | |
on the assumption that you're dealing | 15:49 | |
with intelligent people who know | 15:51 | |
about as much as we do about these patterns. | 15:52 | |
And I think if you analyze that, | 15:55 | |
it becomes perfectly clear that | 15:58 | |
from the administration's point of view, | 16:00 | |
they would not be adverse to this kind of development. | 16:02 | |
Second, there is an independence | 16:05 | |
between the Treasury and the-- I'm sorry, | 16:09 | |
between the Fed and the administration. | 16:12 | |
That independence is very far, indeed, from complete. | 16:14 | |
There is no doubt that on a basic, | 16:17 | |
really important thing, the administration | 16:19 | |
will ultimately have its way. | 16:21 | |
But a Fed can, for a time, move | 16:24 | |
very much against the administration's will. | 16:26 | |
It has in the past. | 16:29 | |
I haven't the slightest doubt that Mr. Burns | 16:32 | |
and the rest of his colony would not depart | 16:36 | |
from what they seriously thought | 16:40 | |
to be the right policy simply in order | 16:42 | |
to be nice to Mr. Nixon. | 16:45 | |
So I'm not sure it matters what the administration | 16:49 | |
believes, but even so, I'm saying I think | 16:51 | |
the interests are in common. | 16:53 | |
And that's the second reason why I would | 16:55 | |
put some weight on this third alternative. | 17:00 | |
Under this third alternative, what might you see? | 17:03 | |
Under this strong third alternative, | 17:07 | |
you would see a peaking out of the rate | 17:09 | |
of growth, of GNP, probably in the first | 17:11 | |
quarter of next year, maybe in the second quarter. | 17:14 | |
By the present monetary pattern, | 17:18 | |
if you take that and stress only that | 17:21 | |
present monetary pattern and assume | 17:23 | |
that the rate of growth of 4% is | 17:25 | |
gonna be continued, then you would see | 17:27 | |
the peaking out in the first quarter | 17:29 | |
with a slightly lower rate of growth in the second quarter. | 17:31 | |
It doesn't mean that you would have | 17:34 | |
a very low rate of growth. | 17:36 | |
It doesn't mean that output would not continue to expand. | 17:37 | |
But instead of output growing at 6% | 17:40 | |
it would be growing at 4%. | 17:42 | |
Instead of GNP growing at maybe 9% | 17:44 | |
per year would be growing maybe at 8% | 17:49 | |
per year or 7% per year. | 17:51 | |
That is it's a pattern that I envisage | 17:53 | |
in the case of this third alternative | 17:56 | |
is sorta something like the pattern | 17:58 | |
that we had in '67, '68. | 18:00 | |
We're in the first part of '67, | 18:08 | |
the mini recession of '66, '67. | 18:09 | |
You had a very slight dampening down, | 18:12 | |
but no absolute declines. | 18:14 | |
Well, I think maybe you did have an absolute decline | 18:18 | |
for one quarter at that time, I think, in GNP. | 18:20 | |
Clark | I think that's right. | 18:22 |
Friedman | But I would envisage | 18:25 |
something even milder than that | 18:26 | |
because I may say that the turnaround | 18:28 | |
on monetary growth when I'm now | 18:29 | |
talking about is a much smaller | 18:31 | |
turnaround than you had at that time. | 18:34 | |
At that time monetary growth was brought down | 18:36 | |
to zero for something like six months. | 18:38 | |
What I'm talking about now is bringing | 18:40 | |
monetary growth down from something | 18:42 | |
like about seven or 8% down to something like 4%. | 18:44 | |
Now all of this may not occur. | 18:50 | |
These three, four months changes | 18:53 | |
in monetary growth cannot by themselves be important. | 18:56 | |
If tomorrow you were to return | 19:00 | |
to a seven or 8% monetary growth, | 19:02 | |
you could wipe out this three month | 19:04 | |
interlude as an erratic observation. | 19:05 | |
So everything depends on what happens | 19:08 | |
from now on with respect to monetary growth. | 19:11 | |
But to summarize, then, I think | 19:13 | |
that there are three scenarios | 19:15 | |
that are possible or not. | 19:17 | |
One, that probably the most likely | 19:18 | |
of those is the consensus forecast | 19:21 | |
of something like a 9%-- I'm just pulling that number out. | 19:24 | |
I haven't made detailed numerical calculations. | 19:30 | |
But of a continued expansion of an expansion | 19:33 | |
that is somewhat more rapid-rate, | 19:36 | |
but with somewhat more of improving prices | 19:38 | |
and less of an output than people expect. | 19:41 | |
I think the second most likely alternative | 19:43 | |
at the moment is what I've called the third scenario: | 19:46 | |
a mini recession in 1973 starting somewhere | 19:49 | |
in the second or the third quarter | 19:52 | |
and produced by a continued slow rate | 19:54 | |
of monetary growth over that period. | 19:56 | |
The third possible scenario goes | 19:59 | |
to the other extreme: that the Fed, | 20:01 | |
being frightened with what it's doing | 20:03 | |
and afraid to continue it too much, | 20:04 | |
moves over to the other side and produces an expansion. | 20:06 | |
If you wanna know which of those | 20:10 | |
is the most likely, I think you should ask | 20:11 | |
yourself the following question. | 20:13 | |
If you were sitting in the seats | 20:15 | |
of the Federal Reserve, which alternative | 20:16 | |
would bother you more-- which mistake | 20:19 | |
would you regret the more: a mistake | 20:21 | |
which caused more recession that was necessary | 20:24 | |
but caused a slowing down of inflation | 20:27 | |
and prevented a resumption of inflation, | 20:30 | |
or a mistake which caused too much inflation? | 20:32 | |
The fascinating thing about these | 20:36 | |
economic matters is that you almost | 20:38 | |
invariably get the thing that worries you less. | 20:40 | |
This is a long-term history. | 20:44 | |
In 1929 people were much more worried, | 20:46 | |
still, about inflation than they were about depression. | 20:49 | |
They were worried about inflation | 20:52 | |
'cause you were, after all, only eight | 20:54 | |
years away from World War I inflation, | 20:55 | |
particularly the post-World War I inflation | 20:59 | |
in which prices rose by a third in the course of two years, | 21:01 | |
and as a result you got a recession, depression. | 21:06 | |
In the post-war period we have been consistently | 21:10 | |
worried much more about recession | 21:12 | |
than we have been about inflation. | 21:14 | |
Therefore, we've gotten inflation. | 21:15 | |
It's not a very strange thing. | 21:17 | |
If you're walking down the street | 21:19 | |
and you're worrying that you might stumble | 21:20 | |
over a rock, you're more likely to hit | 21:22 | |
your head on a branch overhead, I mean. | 21:24 | |
Then if you've got the opposite | 21:26 | |
fears, then that's the way it is here. | 21:27 | |
So I think if you wanna know which way | 21:29 | |
the Fed if it errs, and there's no way of avoiding | 21:31 | |
some measure of error-- if you wanna know | 21:37 | |
which way it's likely to err, | 21:39 | |
try to answer that question for yourself. | 21:40 | |
Clark | Milton, I wonder if I could persuade | 21:44 |
you to be like the weatherman who says | 21:45 | |
there's a 10% chance of precipitation | 21:46 | |
and assign percentages of likelihood | 21:49 | |
to these three scenarios. | 21:51 | |
Friedman | Well I would say the consensus | 21:52 |
scenario probably has a likelihood of something like 60%. | 21:54 | |
The mini recession scenario, something like 30%. | 21:58 | |
And the movement into unduly rapid | 22:02 | |
inflation something like 10%. | 22:06 | |
Clark | That's very interesting. | 22:08 |
And what does all this mean as far | 22:09 | |
as interest rates are concerned? | 22:11 | |
Friedman | Well what happens to interest | 22:12 |
rates depends critically on these three scenarios. | 22:14 | |
If the consensus scenario develops, | 22:17 | |
short-term interest rates will continue | 22:21 | |
to rise and long-term interest rates | 22:23 | |
will start to rise because as inflation | 22:25 | |
starts resuming, even if it's only a moderate | 22:28 | |
acceleration, even if it only goes | 22:31 | |
from 3% to three and a half or 4%, | 22:33 | |
that will reawaken fears of inflation, | 22:36 | |
cause investors and both borrowers | 22:38 | |
and lenders to assign a higher | 22:41 | |
premium for inflation protection | 22:45 | |
and thus raise interest rates. | 22:48 | |
If the scenario involving a possible | 22:50 | |
mini recession were to eventually-- | 22:54 | |
then short-term interest rates | 22:57 | |
might, well, continue to rise, | 22:59 | |
but they would rise very, very modestly. | 23:01 | |
Indeed, I interpret the fact that short-rate | 23:03 | |
interest rates have risen so little | 23:07 | |
in the past three months to an indirect | 23:08 | |
reaction to the beginning of such a policy. | 23:10 | |
And in that case, it is highly likely that long-term | 23:14 | |
interest rates would stay horizontal | 23:18 | |
and would not show much of a rise next year. | 23:20 | |
Obviously on the third scenario | 23:22 | |
of a resumption of a rapid acceleration | 23:24 | |
of inflation and inflation going up | 23:27 | |
to four, four and a half, 5% by the end | 23:29 | |
of 1973, then both short- and long-term | 23:31 | |
interest rates will rise, and rise substantially. | 23:35 | |
Clark | Thank you, professor Friedman. | 23:39 |
May I remind you subscribers that if you | 23:40 | |
would like to suggest subjects | 23:42 | |
for Dr. Friedman to talk about or ask | 23:44 | |
questions of him, you may do so | 23:46 | |
by writing to Instructional Dynamics | 23:48 | |
166 East Superior Street, Chicago, six oh six one one. | 23:51 | |
We'll be talking again with professor Milton Friedman | 23:57 | |
of the University of Chicago in another couple of weeks. | 23:59 | |
[silence] | 24:02 |
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