Alan S. Blinder, Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Alan S. Blinder had an article in the Wall Street Journal of 12/29/2021 entitled “When It comes to Inflation, I’m Still on Team Transitory.”  Unlike many financial talk-show prognosticators, Professor Blinder did more than recite a bunch of hunches. He decomposed indexes (both CPI, PCE) and analyzed their measures of inflation in 2021.  He implicitly acknowledged Functional Macroeconomic Dynamics’ surplus circuit and he acknowledged that it takes time to implement capital expansion in order to cure supply shortages. He correctly reminded the readers that the government was forced to take extraordinary monetary actions to mitigate the Covid slowdown.  He implicitly characterized as probabilistic predictions by himself and others, including his prediction of “transitory inflation.” He asked, “What could make Team Transitory wrong?” Prof. Blinder is to be credited for being somewhat analytical and providing useful details.  However, the following comments are offered in order to a) improve the sketchiness of Walrasian macrostatics by means of Lonergan’s scientific systematics, and b) properly assign responsibility to avoid or correct inflation and unemployment.  (Click here)

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