Is the Fed measuring the money supply badly?
March 13, 2012
Bruce McCullough at Drexel sent me information about a recent book by William A. Barnett that argues "Yes!": Getting it Wrong: How Faulty Monetary Statistics Undermine the Fed, the Financial System, and the Economy.
This is not my field, but Bruce's endorsement counts a lot with me. The book is also favorably blurbed by James J. Heckman and Julio J. Rotemberg.
Barnett's argument is that simple aggregate measures of the money supply should be replaced by a Divisia--weighted--measure. Here's one paragraph of a review posted at Amazon:
Noting that other central banks, e.g., the Bank of England, the Polish central bank, and the Bank of Israel all get it right when it comes to measuring the money supply, one must wonder, Why would the Federal Reserve intentionally "get it wrong"? You'll have to read the book to find out but, as Barnett writes, page 153, "It is tempting to conclude that the Federal Reserve has been producing inferior data simply by innocent mistake. But this is clearly not true. The Fed does not emply [sic] hundreds of stupid economists." The book recounts many disturbing incidents that testify to the Fed's lack of transparency and accountability.