William Watson: Trumpians consider mucking with monetary policy just when it’s working beautifully fpcomment
In the last two weeks, I spent about 20 hours driving U.S. Interstate Highways. It’s not the most efficient way to gather economic data. But “gather how you can” is the economist’s creed. One thing I noticed is that the U.S. labour market is booming. You see lots of 18-wheelers down there these days whose rear doors carry invitations to join the trucking business: “Home most weekends.” “Full benefits.” “45 to 60 cents a mile and a quarter of the gross.” “Great working conditions.
Strangely, despite the great jobs numbers and the widespread evidence of a labour market on the boil, lots of people want radical regime change in U.S. macroeconomic policy. That’s a little like Tiger Woods deciding in 2000, after winning four majors in a row, that he needed a new golf swing. OK, in comparative terms Tiger was on an even better roll then than the U.S. economy is now. But still.
The change she wants is a return to the gold standard, which if countries followed its rules, would end the modern practice of competitive currency devaluation. That would certainly be a good thing.
Despite the guilty association, however, would it really make more sense to tie the dollar to commodities whose supply is dominated by religious fundamentalists or communist cronies or Vladimir Putin than to try to stabilize the dollar against all the goods Americans consume, in the proportions they consume them in, which is what the current regime of inflation targeting aims to do?
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