This may surprise you, but Christina Romer and John Taylor both agree on an important issue. They both see the need for an explicit monetary policy rule that would provide more transparency and predictability of the Fed's actions. Here is Christina Romer in a recent article:
[The Fed] could set a price-level target, which, unlike an inflation target, calls for Fed policy to take past years’ price changes into account. That would lead the Fed to counteract some of the extremely low inflation during the recession with a more expansionary policy and lower real rates for a while. All of these alternatives would be helpful and would retain the Fed’s credibility as a defender of price stability.
So Romer wants a price level rule that would keep the price level growing according to some target rate. This would not only commit the Fed to long-term price stability, but it would also create more certainty for the markets. John Taylor makes the same point in his critique of Bernanke's recent testimony before congress:
[T]he exchange between Chairman Bernanke and Senator Toomey suggests that the Fed is unclear about what monetary policy strategy it is using for the interest rate. Is it the Taylor Rule, as in the first response? Is it the rule incorrectly attributed to me in 1999, as in the second response? Is it some estimated rule, as in the third response? Or is it something else? It would be useful to know what the strategy is. Greater transparency about the strategy would add greatly to predictability and would help markets understand whether quantitative easing will be extended or when the interest rate will break out of the 0-.25 percent range.
I agree with both of them. We desperately need a rule-based approach to monetary policy that would provide more certainty. Instead of a price level rule or a Taylor rule, though, let me suggest another alternative: a nominal GDP level target. If congress is serious about narrowing the mandate of the Fed, they should could consider this option too.
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