We Are All Quasi-Monetarists

Paul Krugman weighs in on the debate stirred up by my post on the excess demand for money:

Brad DeLong manfully takes on the efforts of various commentators to define away the paradox of thrift and redefine our current problems as somehow wholly monetary. As I see it, this is all a desperate attempt to cut and stretch things into a quasi-monetarist framework, for no good reason. 

So those of us who believe that all along the Fed could have done more, should have done more, and still should be doing more are now "quasi-monetarists." Fine, but addressing the above list of  Fed shortcomings was the  ultimate point of  my post.   Yes, I did this by pointing out that the current aggregate demand problem is at its core an excess money demand problem.  And, thus, policymakers who wish to address the AD problem must ultimately address an excess money demand problem.  Here, I was just attempting to take a deeper look at the AD problem from a monetary perspective.  DeLong really didn't disagree with my assessment, he just questioned how the Fed could address the excess money demand problem in practice.   The fact is we really aren't all that different on this issue.  Even Krugman at some level is a quasi-monetarist--he has to be given we live in monetary economy.  This point is forcefully made by both Nick Rowe and Scott Sumner in their replies to Krugman.

Update: Josh Hendrickson adds further perspective on this debate.