I just spent 10 minutes thinking unkind things about Eddie Bauer. I even shouted an anguished swear word, piercing the silence of my otherwise quiet home. My husband Nick had an overnight guest – our toddler grandson – while I was away and had forgotten to fold up the Eddie Bauer portable crib. Trying to be serious in my home office with a baby crib in my eye’s sight was not working for me, so I decided to take on Nick’s assigned chore and put the crib away. The task should be straightforward I thought. (It’s not IKEA furniture after all with one page of instruction containing no words.) It seemed like I should have been able to unlock the crib’s sides by squeezing plastic handles to collapse the unit, and then put the far-more-compact unit into its zippered case. But as I…
On CNBC’s “The Call”, I Disagreed with Supply-siders Predicting Higher Inflation
I had occasion yesterday to be on The Call, a CNBC television show hosted by economist Larry Kudlow. Like other supply-side economists, Kudlow follows Milton Friedman in assuming that the inflation rate is driven solely by monetary policy. My topic as a talking head: Where is inflation headed in the US? Inflation matters because it affects the stock market, interest rates and our real wealth and income. I think horse racing is a good analogy for inflation predictions. A lot of people are betting on the horse called inflationary expectations: the Federal Reserve’s monetary stimulus will create higher inflation rates so let’s build that expectation into today’s interest rates and prices. Another horse is medical costs: pharmaceutical companies and health care providers are raising rates in anticipation pricing pressures once the Democrat’s national health care policy is enacted. Yet another horse is energy…