Tape 173 - Monetary Policy, Wheat Sale, Oil Decontrol, Kelso
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- | Hello, this is Rose Friedman inviting you once again | 0:02 |
to our biweekly conversations with Dr. Milton Friedman, | 0:06 | |
professor of economics at the University of Chicago. | 0:09 | |
We are taping this conversation early in August. | 0:12 | |
We have a couple of letters | 0:17 | |
that I think we ought to take care of first. | 0:19 | |
The first one is from a subscriber, Ray A. Graham, Jr., | 0:22 | |
who sends the following letter. | 0:27 | |
I sent the enclosed while you were on your Chile and | 0:30 | |
Japan et cetera trip. | 0:32 | |
I think it is still apropos because it seems to say | 0:34 | |
monetarists are old-fashioned and out of date. | 0:37 | |
Now, Burns claims, the economy has turned up, | 0:40 | |
and you said earlier this year | 0:43 | |
the turn would come sometime between August and November. | 0:44 | |
Would you care to comment on this? | 0:48 | |
The earlier letter which Mr. Graham refers to briefly | 0:50 | |
says Dr. Burns testified before the Joint Economic Committee | 0:57 | |
that M-one has lost the significance it used to have | 1:00 | |
and that economists relying upon it were behind the times. | 1:03 | |
He claimed that the aggregate amount of money supply | 1:08 | |
really grew overall at an excessive rate of 7.8% | 1:11 | |
in the fourth quarter. | 1:15 | |
You might answer Mr. Graham's question | 1:17 | |
with the added evidence from Burns's recent testimony | 1:21 | |
before the House Banking Committee | 1:23 | |
and the Joint Economic Committee. | 1:25 | |
- | Mr. Burns's statements to which Mr. Graham refers | 1:29 |
are very much in line | 1:34 | |
with the long tradition of the Federal Reserve for 60 years | 1:36 | |
of finding no evil whatsoever | 1:40 | |
and no mistakes whatsoever in its own behavior | 1:43 | |
and finding excuses in outside events | 1:46 | |
for every departure from prosperity and success | 1:49 | |
in the economy as a whole. | 1:54 | |
I have long been particularly amused by | 1:56 | |
the M-one, M-two game that Dr. Burns is now playing. | 1:59 | |
For many years, | 2:06 | |
during my long career as a critic of the Federal Reserve, | 2:09 | |
the Federal Reserve's favorite answer to me | 2:15 | |
was that I was unrealistic | 2:17 | |
and had no idea what was really going on | 2:19 | |
because I insisted on using M-two, | 2:22 | |
a broader definition of money, instead of M-one, | 2:24 | |
at that time, the Federal Reserve's favorite. | 2:29 | |
But of course, it's not surprising | 2:33 | |
that as soon as M-two | 2:34 | |
speaks up better for the Fed than M-one, | 2:36 | |
the Fed will shift to it, | 2:39 | |
and that has all that Mr. Burns has done. | 2:40 | |
Whether you look at M-one or M-two, | 2:44 | |
there is no doubt that in 1974, | 2:46 | |
the Fed shifted sharply from a highly expansive policy | 2:50 | |
to a highly contractionary policy. | 2:55 | |
Whether you look at M-one or M-two, | 2:57 | |
there is no doubt that the Fed | 2:59 | |
in January or February of this year | 3:01 | |
shifted sharply from a highly contractionary policy | 3:03 | |
to a highly expansionary policy. | 3:07 | |
Despite all of Mr. Burns's talk | 3:10 | |
about the economy being awash with liquidity | 3:12 | |
in the last quarter of 1974, | 3:14 | |
let me just give you a few numbers | 3:17 | |
which bring out dramatically what happened. | 3:19 | |
Consider the annual rates of growth of M-one | 3:22 | |
for the three and a half years | 3:26 | |
from January 1971 to June 1974, | 3:27 | |
the period during which we moved into | 3:31 | |
an accelerating inflation | 3:33 | |
and ending up at double digit inflation. | 3:35 | |
During those three and a half years, | 3:38 | |
M-one rose at the annual rate of 7.1%. | 3:40 | |
From June 1974 to January 1975, | 3:44 | |
M-one rose at the rate of 1.4%. | 3:48 | |
From January 1975 to June 1976, | 3:52 | |
that is, in the past five months, | 3:56 | |
M-one has risen at the rate of 10.4%, or decidedly above | 3:58 | |
the rate of rise in the three and a half years | 4:03 | |
before June 1974 that produced double digit inflation. | 4:06 | |
The story is no different for the broader measure, | 4:10 | |
M-two, or for still broader measures. | 4:15 | |
For M-two, the rate of growth from 1971 to '74 was 10.1%. | 4:17 | |
From June '74 to January 1975, 5.3%, | 4:24 | |
or only about half as much. | 4:28 | |
And in the past five months, 12.9%, | 4:30 | |
again higher than in the earlier period. | 4:33 | |
The fascinating thing about | 4:38 | |
the Federal Reserve's public statements | 4:40 | |
is the extent to which | 4:42 | |
they are able to pull a wool | 4:44 | |
over the eyes of most financial commentators | 4:48 | |
who take the words that come out of the Fed | 4:52 | |
as if they corresponded to reality | 4:54 | |
rather than accepting them for what they are, | 4:57 | |
namely a public relations whitewash. | 5:00 | |
This has been true | 5:02 | |
of every annual report of the Federal Reserve | 5:03 | |
since the first one in 1914. | 5:05 | |
It has been true of almost, | 5:09 | |
almost without exception, | 5:11 | |
of all statements before congressional committees | 5:12 | |
by a chairman of the Fed. | 5:15 | |
The most recent examples of this propensity | 5:17 | |
toward whitewash | 5:24 | |
is provided in the two statements that you referred to. | 5:26 | |
The earlier of these was a statement on July 24, 1975 | 5:31 | |
before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. | 5:35 | |
The second was a statement on July 29 | 5:39 | |
before the Joint Economic Committee. | 5:42 | |
The contents of both are essentially the same. | 5:44 | |
In many ways, the more important of these | 5:47 | |
is a statement before the committee on banking. | 5:49 | |
This is the second of the quarterly statements | 5:52 | |
required under the concurrent resolution | 5:56 | |
passed earlier this year about which I talked at some length | 5:59 | |
in earlier tapes. | 6:02 | |
This concurrent resolution requires the Fed, | 6:05 | |
from time to time, to state what its objectives are | 6:09 | |
with respect to monetary growth rates. | 6:11 | |
In this statement, | 6:15 | |
the first thing we might call attention to | 6:18 | |
is the double talk, whereby Chairman Burns implies | 6:21 | |
and leaves the impression | 6:27 | |
that the targets stated in his May 1st statement | 6:29 | |
before the Senate Banking Committee have not been changed, | 6:35 | |
when in fact they have been raised. | 6:39 | |
Let me read to you from his statement. | 6:44 | |
Quote, on May 1st of this year, | 6:58 | |
I informed the Senate Banking Committee | 7:00 | |
that the Federal Reserve was seeking | 7:01 | |
a moderate rate of expansion | 7:03 | |
in the monetary and credit aggregate | 7:04 | |
and that the course we are pursuing | 7:06 | |
will promote an increase of M-one | 7:08 | |
between five and seven and a half percent over the 12 months | 7:10 | |
ending in March 1976. | 7:13 | |
He then referred to the related growth rates | 7:16 | |
in other aggregates and went on. | 7:18 | |
Quote, economic prospects now are not materially different | 7:20 | |
than the Federal Reserve anticipated | 7:24 | |
two or three months ago, | 7:26 | |
and we therefore as yet see no reason | 7:27 | |
to alter the general course of monetary policy. | 7:30 | |
Accordingly, the Federal Open Market Committee | 7:33 | |
has reaffirmed its intent to seek the growth ranges | 7:36 | |
announced earlier. | 7:41 | |
Most newspaper commentators, | 7:43 | |
in fact, every single one that I have seen, | 7:46 | |
stopped at that point in his report, | 7:48 | |
and the headline said the Fed keeps on changed its targets. | 7:50 | |
They stopped a little early. | 7:56 | |
The next sentence says, quote, | 7:58 | |
in view of the erratic movements to which monthly figures | 8:00 | |
on money balances are subject, | 8:03 | |
the projected growth ranges for the several aggregates | 8:05 | |
now cover the 12-month span from the second quarter | 8:08 | |
of 1975 to the second quarter of 1976. | 8:12 | |
In the future, we will generally express | 8:16 | |
our projected growth range of each monetary aggregate | 8:19 | |
from a quarterly base | 8:22 | |
since a three months average is less subject | 8:23 | |
to erratic movements in a single month base. | 8:26 | |
Well, that sounds fun, | 8:29 | |
but it essentially conceals a change in target. | 8:31 | |
And the more amusing thing about it is | 8:35 | |
that the particular three months used as a base | 8:38 | |
is not a random three months. | 8:40 | |
In the very next page of his testimony, | 8:43 | |
Mr. Burns goes on to explain | 8:46 | |
that two of those three months, namely May and June, | 8:49 | |
were abnormal. | 8:54 | |
He says the May-June bulge in the monetary aggregates | 8:56 | |
did not come as a surprise, | 8:59 | |
but it was larger than we had expected | 9:01 | |
and very much larger than we desired. | 9:03 | |
But that didn't keep him from including it in the base | 9:05 | |
to which the ranges, the growth ranges to be applied | 9:08 | |
in order to eliminate erratic movements. | 9:11 | |
What is the result of applying | 9:14 | |
the same percentages to the quarterly base | 9:17 | |
instead of the monthly base? | 9:19 | |
As the subscribers know, | 9:22 | |
I have pointed out repeatedly | 9:25 | |
that during that quarter, the Fed has consistently | 9:27 | |
been above the upper limit of its earlier range. | 9:29 | |
As a result, the effect of using the new base | 9:33 | |
is implicitly to raise the specified range. | 9:36 | |
I have made the calculation | 9:41 | |
to ask the following question. | 9:43 | |
Let me take the new base. | 9:45 | |
Beginning on that new base, | 9:47 | |
let me estimate the five to seven and a half percent limits | 9:49 | |
month after month. | 9:51 | |
From those limits, what is the implied rate of change | 9:53 | |
from March '75 to March '76? | 9:57 | |
That is, what has happened to the prior range? | 9:59 | |
The answer comes out | 10:04 | |
that instead of five to seven and a half percent, | 10:06 | |
we now have five to 7.8, 5.7 to 7.8%. | 10:08 | |
The bottom range was raised | 10:14 | |
by about three-quarters of a percentage point. | 10:16 | |
The top range by over one-quarter of a percentage point. | 10:18 | |
These are not large changes, | 10:22 | |
but they are definite changes | 10:25 | |
and they certainly do not agree | 10:27 | |
with the impression which is given. | 10:29 | |
Let me indicate the effect of those changes in another way. | 10:32 | |
For the latest week for which I have monetary data, | 10:36 | |
which is the week ending July 19, | 10:38 | |
actual M-one was 1.8 billion dollars above | 10:42 | |
the upper limit of the range based on the earlier targets. | 10:46 | |
The change in the base eliminated half of that discrepancy. | 10:51 | |
On the new base, the actual M-one | 10:56 | |
is nine-tenths of a billion dollars above the upper limit. | 10:59 | |
If I look at M-two and make the same calculation, | 11:04 | |
and here again the effect has been to increase | 11:07 | |
the effective ranges, | 11:10 | |
M-two was 4.1 billion dollars above the upper limit | 11:12 | |
on the earlier basis. | 11:17 | |
On the basis of the new targets, | 11:19 | |
it is 2.8 billion dollars above. | 11:21 | |
By changing the target, Mr. Burns erased 1.3 billion dollars | 11:24 | |
of the excess over his target. | 11:29 | |
This is a very discouraging performance. | 11:33 | |
I have expressed on an earlier tape | 11:36 | |
high hopes in maybe this new method of handling things | 11:38 | |
would lead the Fed to be more consistent and systematic | 11:42 | |
in honoring its own aggregate targets. | 11:47 | |
I must confess that the testimony which was given | 11:51 | |
this time greatly reduces any confidence I may have | 11:54 | |
that it will have that effect | 11:58 | |
because it is clear that the whole thrust of the testimony | 12:00 | |
is to rationalize what the Federal Reserve does, | 12:07 | |
whatever it may be | 12:09 | |
and, in advance, to find alibis and excuses | 12:11 | |
for future failure of performance. | 12:14 | |
Let me go on and illustrate that in more detail. | 12:18 | |
First, | 12:24 | |
let us look at what | 12:28 | |
Mr. Burns said in his testimony | 12:34 | |
before the Banking Committee, House Banking Committee | 12:36 | |
about the recession we are in | 12:41 | |
and about monetary policy during that recession. | 12:45 | |
As I pointed out on the numbers I gave earlier, | 12:48 | |
the Fed in fact turned | 12:50 | |
from a very expansive and inflationary monetary policy | 12:53 | |
to a very contractionary monetary policy | 12:57 | |
in the middle of 1974, | 12:59 | |
and in my opinion, this shift in monetary policy | 13:02 | |
was the major factor that produced the sharp | 13:06 | |
increase in the severity of the recession in late 1974. | 13:12 | |
That is not the way Mr. Burns sees it. | 13:16 | |
He says, quote, last summer, | 13:19 | |
as signs of weakening in economic activity multiplied, | 13:21 | |
the Federal Reserve began taking steps to increase | 13:25 | |
the availability of money and credit. | 13:28 | |
The efforts of the Federal Reserve to ease credit conditions | 13:32 | |
together with the weakening of private credit demand | 13:37 | |
resulted in the sharp decline | 13:39 | |
of short-term rates of interest. | 13:41 | |
If this isn't double talk, gobbledy-gook, I never heard it. | 13:43 | |
The fact is that far from moving to ease credit conditions, | 13:48 | |
the Fed moved to tighten them. | 13:52 | |
The sharp reduction in the rate of monetary growth reflected | 13:54 | |
its unwillingness to allow | 13:58 | |
the weakening of private credit demands | 14:01 | |
to have its full effect on rates of interest. | 14:03 | |
Let me go on. | 14:07 | |
There is a considerable discussion | 14:16 | |
or some comment in his statement | 14:18 | |
about future rates of monetary growth. | 14:21 | |
Clearly, he says, the growth rates presently sought | 14:24 | |
by the Federal Reserve, | 14:27 | |
while appropriate in the present environment | 14:27 | |
of high unemployment and unused industrial capacity, | 14:29 | |
could not be maintained indefinitely | 14:32 | |
without rekindling inflationary forces. | 14:34 | |
As the economy returns | 14:37 | |
to higher rates of resource utilization, | 14:38 | |
it will be necessary to reduce the rate | 14:41 | |
of monetary and credit expansion | 14:42 | |
so that the basis for a lasting prosperity is laid, | 14:44 | |
end quote. | 14:47 | |
Now that statement is eminently satisfactory. | 14:48 | |
I agree with it fully. | 14:51 | |
What does it say? | 14:52 | |
It says the rate of monetary growth | 14:54 | |
has a great deal to do with inflation. | 14:55 | |
But if the rate of monetary growth is high, | 14:57 | |
you are threatened with inflation, | 14:59 | |
but the only way you can halt inflation | 15:01 | |
is to have low monetary growth. | 15:03 | |
Fine, excellent sentence. | 15:05 | |
But now if that's true for the future, | 15:07 | |
wouldn't you suppose it had something to do with | 15:09 | |
past inflation? | 15:11 | |
If so, you would never find it out | 15:13 | |
by reading Mr. Burns's testimony. | 15:15 | |
Mr. Burns discusses at some length past inflation. | 15:17 | |
And what does he attribute past inflation to? | 15:22 | |
It's attributed to speculation, | 15:25 | |
to the lax financial performance of the US government, | 15:27 | |
to bad harvest, to oil prices, to dollar devaluation, | 15:31 | |
to the worldwide boom. | 15:36 | |
In the whole discussion of the developments leading up | 15:38 | |
to the double digit inflation of 1974, | 15:41 | |
there is not, the word money and monetary policy | 15:44 | |
is not even mentioned, | 15:47 | |
let alone brushed to one side. | 15:49 | |
Clearly, past inflation was none of the | 15:54 | |
Federal Reserve's fault. | 15:56 | |
I said earlier that the Fed is now already | 15:58 | |
creating alibis for the future. | 16:01 | |
In his testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, | 16:04 | |
Mr. Burns jumped on a question | 16:09 | |
to go out of his way to stress the possibility | 16:13 | |
that Russian wheat sales | 16:17 | |
might have inflationary consequences. | 16:19 | |
If inflation does develop, | 16:23 | |
as it will if the Fed continues | 16:25 | |
with anything like its present rates of growth, | 16:28 | |
I think you can be quite sure | 16:30 | |
that you will hear from the Fed | 16:33 | |
that it was events beyond its control | 16:35 | |
that produced its result, | 16:38 | |
that it had nothing whatsoever to do with it, | 16:40 | |
that it was Russian wheat purchases and similar things. | 16:41 | |
This has been a rather long-winded | 16:51 | |
answer to Mr. Graham's question, | 16:54 | |
to the subject that Mr. Graham's question suggested, | 16:56 | |
and I suddenly discovered that I really haven't | 16:59 | |
commented on the specific point he raised | 17:02 | |
in his recent letter, in which he said, | 17:05 | |
now Burns claims the economy has turned up, | 17:07 | |
and you said earlier this year, | 17:10 | |
the turn would come become August and November. | 17:11 | |
That's true. | 17:13 | |
The turn has come, I believe. | 17:14 | |
As I said on some earlier tapes, | 17:17 | |
the lag between the change in monetary policy | 17:20 | |
and the change in the economy has been abnormally short. | 17:22 | |
I am inclined to put the trough of monetary policy | 17:27 | |
in January as indicated by the figures I gave earlier. | 17:30 | |
And the turn in the economy appears to have come in May, | 17:36 | |
which means that you only had a four months lag | 17:41 | |
between the change in monetary policy | 17:44 | |
and the change in the economy, | 17:46 | |
whereas ordinarily we would have a six to nine months lag. | 17:48 | |
In some ways, this is a favorable sign, | 17:53 | |
but in some other ways, I think it's a very | 17:55 | |
unfavorable sign. | 17:57 | |
The reason I think it is an unfavorable sign | 17:59 | |
is because it suggests that the lags may be sharpening. | 18:02 | |
I have commented earlier here that I have seen | 18:07 | |
very real signs, I believe, | 18:11 | |
that the lag in the relation of interest rates | 18:12 | |
to rate of change in money has definitely shortened. | 18:15 | |
If the lag in the relationship of spending | 18:18 | |
to monetary growth has also shortened, | 18:20 | |
this means that we may come, | 18:24 | |
that the expansion may turn into inflation | 18:28 | |
sooner than I have heretofore have been supposing. | 18:32 | |
I have been arguing that even if the Fed were to continue | 18:33 | |
with a very, the kind of very expansive monetary policy | 18:36 | |
it has been engaging in, | 18:39 | |
the initial effects would be on output, | 18:43 | |
that we could expect '75 and '76 | 18:45 | |
to see a very vigorous expansion | 18:47 | |
and that the effect on inflation would not be felt | 18:50 | |
until late '76 or early '77. | 18:52 | |
But if the whole process is being telescoped, | 18:55 | |
then it might be that the effects on inflation | 18:57 | |
would be felt much sooner. | 19:00 | |
Now I don't mean to be predicting | 19:02 | |
that the Fed will necessarily continue on its present | 19:04 | |
extraordinarily expansive rate of growth. | 19:07 | |
Mr. Burns stated specifically in his statement before the | 19:10 | |
Banking Committee that the Fed did not intend to permit | 19:17 | |
recent, the rates of growth of May and June | 19:21 | |
to be continued. | 19:24 | |
And there are some signs that over the past few weeks, | 19:25 | |
there has been some tapering off and tempering | 19:29 | |
of the rate of growth. | 19:32 | |
But as I mentioned over the four weeks, | 19:33 | |
from the week ending June 25 to the week ending July 25, | 19:36 | |
the money stock grew by a trivial | 19:42 | |
one-tenth of a billion dollars. | 19:45 | |
But this is a very small sample on which to base anything, | 19:48 | |
and hence I think we should continue to look | 19:52 | |
at what the Federal Reserve does | 19:55 | |
and not what it says in its statements, | 19:57 | |
which are clearly intended more to influence the public | 20:00 | |
and the public's attitude toward the Fed, | 20:04 | |
than to describe what is actually going on. | 20:07 | |
- | You referred to Mr. Burns's talk about | 20:11 |
the Soviet wheat deal. | 20:16 | |
Don't you think it's going to be inflationary? | 20:17 | |
- | Not at all. | 20:19 |
Insofar as the Soviet wheat deal has any effect, | 20:20 | |
it's deflationary. | 20:22 | |
I say has any effect because I think | 20:24 | |
it really has very little effect one way or another | 20:27 | |
on inflation or deflation, | 20:29 | |
but let's look at it very quickly. | 20:30 | |
The 1972 wheat deal | 20:34 | |
involved the US taxpayer subsidizing the Soviet Union. | 20:38 | |
We sold that wheat to the Soviet Union | 20:43 | |
at a subsidized low price. | 20:46 | |
As a result, the effect of that wheat sale | 20:48 | |
was to leave the US citizen with less goods and services, | 20:52 | |
somehow or other, we had to pay for that subsidy. | 20:57 | |
We gave away wheat as it were to the Soviet Union | 20:59 | |
instead of using it to buy as many foreign goods | 21:02 | |
as we could, so we were poorer. | 21:04 | |
And with a lower level of total output | 21:06 | |
and the same level of money spending, | 21:08 | |
insofar as that had any effect, it was inflation. | 21:10 | |
But the present wheat deal is quite different. | 21:13 | |
So far as I can see, no subsidy whatsoever is involved. | 21:15 | |
The Soviet Union is going to buy it at the market price. | 21:19 | |
That means that the | 21:22 | |
US economy is able to sell wheat at favorable terms. | 21:26 | |
The proceeds from the wheat will tend to | 21:31 | |
raise the exchange rate of the US dollar | 21:34 | |
in terms of foreign currencies. | 21:37 | |
It will tend to make foreign goods cheaper. | 21:38 | |
It will tend to add to the supply of goods | 21:40 | |
in the United States, in effect, | 21:42 | |
stripping it of financial complications. | 21:43 | |
The US economy is trading wheat for | 21:46 | |
Japanese TV sets and radios, | 21:50 | |
for German cameras, for whatever we buy from abroad. | 21:53 | |
The result is to increase the total volume | 21:57 | |
of goods and services available to the American people | 21:59 | |
and insofar as that has any effect, it is deflationary. | 22:02 | |
I have been very much amused by what seems to me to be | 22:06 | |
an obvious conflict between newspaper reports | 22:08 | |
on the oil situation on the one hand | 22:12 | |
and on the wheat situation on the other. | 22:15 | |
With respect to the rise in the price of oil | 22:18 | |
engineered by the OPEC countries, | 22:21 | |
the journalists said with one cry, that's inflationary. | 22:23 | |
Well now that was the case | 22:27 | |
in which we were buying something at a high price, | 22:29 | |
we were forced to pay a high price, | 22:32 | |
that was in the way I described earlier inflationary | 22:34 | |
in the sense that it did reduce | 22:37 | |
the total volume of resources that we had. | 22:39 | |
We had to transfer wealth to the Arab countries. | 22:40 | |
Now, the same journalists are saying with a single voice | 22:44 | |
that the effect of a higher price for something we sell | 22:48 | |
is also inflationary. | 22:51 | |
Apparently, the one general rule you can follow is | 22:52 | |
that you look at the bad side of everything. | 22:55 | |
- | With respect to oil, it looks as though | 22:57 |
we're going to get decontrol of prices. | 23:00 | |
How do you view this prospect? | 23:02 | |
- | I view it as a wonderful example | 23:04 |
of the strange and mysterious ways | 23:06 | |
in which providence works its will. | 23:08 | |
The actual outcome is the best of all possible worlds. | 23:11 | |
As my subscribers know, I've been strongly in favor | 23:14 | |
of complete and utter decontrol. | 23:19 | |
But in this case, journalistic error has produced | 23:21 | |
political benefit. | 23:24 | |
The widespread talk that decontrol | 23:26 | |
would have dire consequences and rise the price of gas | 23:29 | |
led the Democratic Congress to be adamant | 23:33 | |
in its unwillingness to accept any compromise | 23:36 | |
which President Ford offered. | 23:40 | |
And presumably the same misconception | 23:42 | |
led President Ford to offer increasingly bad compromises. | 23:44 | |
The stalemate means that we are going to have | 23:48 | |
sudden and complete decontrol on August 31. | 23:50 | |
I suspect that the president will balance that | 23:54 | |
by taking off the tariff on imported oil. | 23:57 | |
The two together will just about balance off. | 24:01 | |
There will be no effect or negligible effect | 24:04 | |
on the domestic price of gasoline and oil products. | 24:07 | |
There will be a significant incentive | 24:09 | |
to domestic production. | 24:11 | |
There will be a significant blow | 24:13 | |
to the OPEC oil cartel. | 24:15 | |
- | Now let's see if we, | 24:18 |
I think we probably have time for that other question | 24:20 | |
that I referred to at the very beginning. | 24:22 | |
It's a question from Jian Parker | 24:25 | |
of the National Bank of Sarasota, | 24:28 | |
and he writes, on July 21, an article appeared in Barron's | 24:30 | |
entitled Mighty Kelso. | 24:33 | |
Mr. Dana L. Thompson comments were and I quote, | 24:35 | |
such big-name professionals as Nobel Prize winner | 24:40 | |
Professor Paul Samuelson, | 24:43 | |
while referring to Kelso's philosophy | 24:44 | |
as a tax loophole gimmick, | 24:46 | |
has refused to debate the issue with him publicly. | 24:48 | |
That other superstar on the conservative side, | 24:51 | |
Milton Friedman, also is sulking. | 24:53 | |
Other leading economists have remained silent. | 24:55 | |
I should greatly appreciate your observations | 24:58 | |
on one of your tapes regarding your sulking. | 25:00 | |
- | I shall be glad to give that observation. | 25:03 |
I might say that in 19, | 25:05 | |
what was it, '50, when were we out in California? | 25:08 | |
- | '57. | 25:12 |
- | 1957 or '58, when I spent a year at the | 25:13 |
Center for Behavioral Studies in Stanford, | 25:16 | |
I engaged in a public debate with Louis Kelso | 25:20 | |
and his then-collaborator Mortimer Adler, | 25:24 | |
in connection with the book they had then brought out, | 25:30 | |
whose title I know forget. | 25:32 | |
In the process of preparing. | 25:36 | |
- | Capitalist Manifesto. | 25:37 |
- | The Capitalist Manifesto, that's right. | 25:38 |
In the course of preparing for that debate, | 25:40 | |
I went over the Capitalist Manifesto and the theory, | 25:43 | |
and I described the theory in the public debate | 25:46 | |
as being Karl Marx stood on his head | 25:50 | |
with a 10% discount for cash. | 25:53 | |
What I meant by that was | 25:56 | |
if Karl Marx had argued that labor produced the whole output | 25:57 | |
but only got part of the output | 26:02 | |
and therefore labor was exploited. | 26:03 | |
Kelso and Adler in their book | 26:06 | |
say that capital produces 100% of the, or 90% of the output, | 26:08 | |
but gets a much smaller fraction of the output | 26:13 | |
and therefore is exploited. | 26:15 | |
The fact of the matter is | 26:17 | |
that Mr. Kelso's analysis | 26:18 | |
does not deserve to be called a philosophy. | 26:22 | |
It does not deserve to be called an analysis. | 26:24 | |
It is simply bad and ignorant economics. | 26:27 | |
The policies he has proposed on the basis of it | 26:30 | |
have virtues as tax loopholes. | 26:33 | |
They have no virtues whatsoever as public policy. | 26:35 | |
They do not, in my opinion, | 26:39 | |
promise to improve the operation of capitalism. | 26:41 | |
The fundamental assumption underlying them | 26:45 | |
is that there is no risk involved | 26:48 | |
in borrowing on a debt basis | 26:51 | |
and lending on an equity basis. | 26:53 | |
Now, any individual who thinks that's true has a rather | 26:56 | |
distorted idea of the nature of the economic system. | 27:02 | |
The appeal which any of his proposals have | 27:06 | |
comes solely from the fact | 27:10 | |
that they are tax loopholes | 27:12 | |
and that they provide a benefit in that way | 27:14 | |
and in that way only. | 27:18 | |
I must confess that having once gone through | 27:20 | |
his material in detail, | 27:23 | |
having once engaged in public debate on it, | 27:24 | |
I have no desire to do so any further. | 27:26 | |
It simply isn't worth the effort. | 27:29 | |
- | Thank you very much. | 27:32 |
Remember subscribers, if you have any questions or comments, | 27:33 | |
please send them to Instructional Dynamics Incorporated, | 27:36 | |
450 East Ohio Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60611. | 27:40 | |
We shall be visiting with you again in about two weeks. | 27:46 |
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