The central bank is like an arsonist watching a fire he set

by Richard W. Rahn Washington Times Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Gerald O'Driscoll, a former senior Fed official and very able economist, recently said it best: "The central bank is like an arsonist watching a fire he set, expressing amazement at how such an event could have happened.
Under a fiat monetary system, which the Fed and almost all other central banks now use, the end of the inflation only comes when the central bank finally decides to end it by restricting money and credit...

Gerald O'Driscoll, a former senior Fed official and very able economist, recently said it best: "The central bank is like an arsonist watching a fire he set, expressing amazement at how such an event could have happened. The Fed created a moral hazard by first, implicitly, then explicitly promising to bail investors out of risky commitments. [Former Fed Chairman Alan] Greenspan promised to 'mitigate the fallout' from asset deflation. How does a central bank do that? By reflating asset prices, or, as Greenspan euphemistically put it in his 1999 testimony, 'ease the transition to the next expansion.' "

Before the Fed and big government, previous bank panics usually ended quickly without "bailouts" or "economic stimulus" programs. Given that the Fed, the Treasury and the Congress are obviously confused about what to do in the current situation, history indicates that perhaps the least harmful course of action is for them to do nothing.

Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.