Letters

A Single Rule Would Make the Fed Better

Mr. Volcker emphasizes that the “responsibility of the government is to have a stable currency,” period.

I chuckled while reading Paul Volcker’s impatience with and castigation of current economics during his interview by a Princeton University student whose understanding of the subject he challenged (“Notable and Quotable,” July 9). He might have told her to read the research of Milton Friedman, one of the Nobel Prize winners whose scientific conclusions are in accordance with Mr. Volcker’s policy views. Mr. Volcker emphasizes that the “responsibility of the government is to have a stable currency,” period. By establishing a single rule, Fed authorities will have no need to determine the optimal mix of inflation and unemployment rates. The former Federal Reserve chairman might also have directed the student to read Friedman’s empirical research studies, demonstrating that the inverse relation between inflation and unemployment holds only for the very short run and that “cost push” as an explanation for inflation is now the social sciences’ “phlogiston.”

Bertrand Horwitz

Asheville, N.C.