September 10, 2010
Wessel did not use exactly those words, but he told listeners that the only option that the Fed still has to boost the economy is to buy more long-term bonds. In 1999, when he was still a professor at Princeton, Bernanke wrote that, in similar circumstances Japan’s central bank should deliberately target a higher inflation rate in the range of 3-4 percent.
This was an idea that was originally proposed by Paul Krugman and has more recently been suggested by Greg Mankiw, President Bush’s top economic advisor, and Olivier Blanchard, the chief economist at the IMF. It would be interesting to know how Mr. Wessel determined that this idea is not a possible policy option.
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