Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 436 of Roger Garrison’s Spring/Summer 2012 Cato Journal paper, “Natural Rates of Interest and Sustainable Growth“:

Finally, it is implausible that the Federal Reserve’s policymakers, who could not tell whether we were in a bubble until it burst, could nonetheless determine the optimal policy for avoiding busts and then, once the busts come, for nursing the economy back to health. Given the policymakers’ incentives, a central bank acts to extend an ongoing boom and then, when it eventually ends in a bust, to initiate another one. And if the market were allowed to nurse the economy back to macroeconomic health, a central bank even of the most beneficent sort could only hope to do no harm. The hope of achieving long-run sustainable growth can only rest on the prospects for decentralizing the business of banking.