U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

64–552 PDF 2011

CAN MONETARY POLICY REALLY CREATE JOBS? 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

DOMESTIC MONETARY POLICY 

AND TECHNOLOGY 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

FEBRUARY 9, 2011 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services 

Serial No. 112–3 

( 

(II) 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES 

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama, Chairman 

JEB HENSARLING, Texas, Vice Chairman 

PETER T. KING, New York 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

RON PAUL, Texas 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina 

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

MICHELE BACHMANN, Minnesota 

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas 

THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan 

KEVIN McCARTHY, California 

STEVAN PEARCE, New Mexico 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

MICHAEL G. FITZPATRICK, Pennsylvania 

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri 

BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan 

SEAN P. DUFFY, Wisconsin 

NAN A. S. HAYWORTH, New York 

JAMES B. RENACCI, Ohio 

ROBERT HURT, Virginia 

ROBERT J. DOLD, Illinois 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

MICHAEL G. GRIMM, New York 

FRANCISCO R. CANSECO, Texas 

STEVE STIVERS, Ohio 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts, Ranking 

Member 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

CAROLYN MCCARTHY, New York 

JOE BACA, California 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina 

DAVID SCOTT, Georgia 

AL GREEN, Texas 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

JOE DONNELLY, Indiana 

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana 

JAMES A. HIMES, Connecticut 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

JOHN C. CARNEY, JR., Delaware 

LARRY C. LAVENDER, Chief of Staff 

(III) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON DOMESTIC MONETARY POLICY AND TECHNOLOGY

RON PAUL, Texas, Chairman 

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina, Vice 

Chairman 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina 

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri 

BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan 

NAN A. S. HAYWORTH, New York 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri, Ranking 

Member 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

AL GREEN, Texas 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

(V) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on: 

February 9, 2011 .............................................................................................. 1 

Appendix: 

February 9, 2011 .............................................................................................. 43 

WITNESSES 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2011 

Bivens, Josh, Ph.D., Macroeconomist, Economic Policy Institute, Washington, 

D.C. ........................................................................................................................ 13

DiLorenzo, Thomas J., Professor of Economics, Sellinger School of Business, 

Loyola University, Baltimore, Maryland ............................................................ 9 

Vedder, Richard K., Distinguished Professor of Economics, Ohio University .... 11 

APPENDIX 

Prepared statements: 

Paul, Hon. Ron .................................................................................................. 44 

Bachus, Hon. Spencer ...................................................................................... 47 

Huizenga, Hon. Bill .......................................................................................... 49 

Bivens, Josh ...................................................................................................... 51 

DiLorenzo, Thomas J. ...................................................................................... 72 

Vedder, Richard K. ........................................................................................... 77 

(1) 

CAN MONETARY POLICY REALLY CREATE 

JOBS? 

Wednesday, February 9, 2011 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON DOMESTIC MONETARY

POLICY AND TECHNOLOGY, COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES, Washington, D.C. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 a.m., in room 

2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ron Paul [chairman of 

the subcommittee] presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Paul, Lucas, Luetkemeyer, 

Huizenga, Hayworth, Schweikert; Clay, Maloney, and Green. 

Ex officio present: Representative Frank. 

Also present: Representative Renacci. 

Chairman PAUL. This hearing will come to order. 

I want to welcome everybody today, our guests as well as our 

Members. 

And I think we will go ahead and introduce our Members now, 

and those who aren’t here, we can do it later on. 

Before I introduce our side, the members on this side, I do want 

to ask unanimous consent for a statement to be inserted into the 

record from Spencer Bachus. He is not here today. He would have 

liked to have attended, but he had to attend a funeral. 

Also, I would like to just mention those individuals who are here. 

First, we have Congressman Lucas from Oklahoma. He is an old 

hand at this. And I think sitting next to him is Blaine Luetkemeyer from Missouri. 

Welcome. 

And I think we have a guest who is not a member of the subcommittee, and that is Jim Renacci from Ohio. 

As others come in, we can recognize them. 

I will defer at the moment here to the ranking member to introduce his Members who are here. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First, let me congratulate you on your election as chairman of 

the subcommittee. And I look forward to working with you in the 

112th Congress. 

Joining us today is the overall ranking member of the Financial 

Services Committee, the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Barney Frank. And I want to thank him for being here today. 

Also with us is a fellow Texan of yours, Mr. Al Green, who represents the City of Houston. And thank you for being here. 

And, of course, I am William Lacy Clay of Missouri. 

2 

Chairman PAUL. Thank you very much. 

I do want to also welcome the Congressman and ranking member 

from Massachusetts. We have worked in the past on many of these 

issues, to the surprise of some people at times. But I am glad he 

is attending today. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would add, to the surprise and occasional dismay of other people. 

Chairman PAUL. But the reason I said kind words is I expect him 

to behave today. That is all. 

I would like to ask unanimous consent that all the statements 

of any member can be admitted into the record. If there is no objection, they will be admitted. 

Oh, and I do need to ask unanimous consent for Jim Renacci to 

sit with us today. 

No objection is heard. 

I would like to go ahead and start with an opening statement, 

and then I will defer to the other Members who care to make statements, as well. 

Today, we are talking mainly about unemployment. And, to me, 

this is a very significant issue that we all care about. I have not 

yet met anybody in the Congress or anywhere who thinks we 

shouldn’t do something about it, so it is unanimous. Unemployment 

is too high, and the goal is to keep unemployment low and employment high. And this would make everybody happy. 

But the disagreement seems to come from trying to understand 

how we got unemployment and what we should do about it. And 

I have argued that if you don’t know exactly why we have unemployment, it is very hard to come up with a solution. 

That is the purpose of these hearings, at least initially, to try to 

understand the ramifications and especially the connection of unemployment to monetary policy. Because people are thinking more 

about the Federal Reserve policy today than ever before. And everybody does have opinions. Some people think there is too much 

easy money and credit and interest rates are too low, and others 

complain on the other side and say that we need more of it, we 

need more expansion of credit and we need more spending. 

So that is where the disagreements are. But I think there should 

be a lot of goodwill here in the goal of finding out just what causes 

our problems and what we can agree on and what we can do about 

it. 

Between 2001 and 2010, we had a population growth of 26 million people. Yet, at the end of that decade, we had 2.3 million less 

people employed. So these numbers aren’t very encouraging. It is 

terrible that there are 2.3 million people not employed, but I think 

it might even underestimate the problem since we had such a big 

population growth. 

Just in the last 3 years, or between 2007 and 2010, we had 7 million jobs lost. I do know that we have had some increase in jobs 

in the last year, but we are still way behind the curve. 

But even with the job increase, we here in Washington, the combination of the Fed and what the Congress has done, we probably 

have pumped in $4 trillion. And if you look at the new jobs we 

have created, I would say they are very, very expensive jobs. I 

imagine we could have given everybody $60,000 or $70,000, maybe 

3 

$100,000—I haven’t done the calculation—just given them the 

money and they would have been better off. And that, of course, 

would have satisfied the people who say we have to stimulate 

spending; the money would be there. But, instead, the money went 

in different places, and the unemployment rates haven’t dropped. 

Another problem I see when we deal with the unemployment is 

sometimes we get confused on how we measure it. The lead figure 

from the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes up every month, and 

they tell us that unemployment is 9 percent. And, oh, it is down 

from 9.5 down to 9; there is a great recovery going on. But the people don’t feel that way. The unemployment rate is still very high. 

And if you look to some of the private sources of measuring unemployment, you find out that unemployment may well be much 

higher. Even the government statistics reveal that if you count all 

the people who are just partially employed or working part-time on 

weekends, that number can jump to 16 or 17 percent. But then if 

you include all those individuals who have given up looking for 

work, there are some who report that the unemployment rate could 

be 22 or 23 percent, reaching almost the height of the Depression. 

So I would encourage all of us to think more seriously about how 

we measure unemployment, and if this is a real problem, that we 

ought to do something about defining how to measure unemployment. 

I think in this discussion today, certainly we will be thinking 

about the results, the inefficiency of the Federal Reserve, because 

they have had a mandate, and the Congress gave them a mandate, 

and the mandate is that we should have stable prices and high employment. I can produce some statistics, and maybe later on will, 

to show that prices really aren’t all that stable. And, certainly, unemployment reflects a failure. If that is their job, they didn’t do a 

very good job. They haven’t been very efficient in producing jobs. 

So these are the things we want to talk about and try to resolve 

and then see what needs to be done. Because, like I said, who 

wants high unemployment? Nobody wants high unemployment. We 

want to get people employed. I work from the assumption that 

there is a direct connection between monetary policy and the business cycle, and, therefore, we should pay more attention to it. 

Now I would like to yield to the ranking member, Mr. Clay. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

We were all privileged to witness President Obama’s stirring 

State of the Union Address. And part of his uplifting message was 

an appeal for all of us to find common ground in order to move our 

Nation forward. That applies here at home and around the world, 

as well. 

But I am amazed that some of my colleagues in the Majority may 

have taken that concept a little bit too far. I never thought that 

I would see the day when allegedly conservative members of the 

Republican Party would side with the People’s Republic of China 

over the best advice of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The 

Republican assertion that the Fed’s actions to infuse the money 

supply in order to hold down interest rates and lower unemployment will somehow harm our currency is absolutely wrong. 

The congressional mandate for the Federal Reserve is really a 

two-sided coin. The Fed has a mission to both maintain stable 

4 

prices and to foster conditions that promote job growth. If we expect this recovery to continue, we need to support both sides of that 

equation. 

As Chairman Bernanke has testified previously, this recession 

was unlike other post-war economic downturns. And I am thankful 

that the President, along with our congressional leadership and in 

coordination with the Federal Reserve, acted courageously to prevent a second Great Depression and to preserve the American middle class. 

Over the last 19 months, with the help of the Federal Reserve’s 

wise monetary policy, corporate profits have soared, financial markets have stabilized and regained much of the value equities that 

was lost, and the private sector has created more than 1 million 

new jobs. And we still have a long way to go, but that is more new 

job creation than during the entire two terms of the Bush Administration. 

While we strive to restore our economic security, fear of future 

inflation is not today’s most important problem. In fact, the core inflation rate is still near 1 percent. The real danger is if we impede 

the money supply; then deflation is next in the economic chain. 

We see real growth and recovery in almost every sector of the 

economy, in part because of the Fed’s actions. Manufacturing is up, 

orders for durable goods are up, and car sales are better than expected, although too few, which is why we cannot let up now. There 

is no doubt that the Fed’s prudent actions to carefully expand the 

money supply were appropriate, and they are helping put Americans back to work. 

I am not concerned about what the Chinese, the Brazilians, or 

the Europeans think about our monetary policy, especially when 

some of those who are complaining the loudest are guilty of manipulating their own currency to hamper American exports, which cost 

jobs here at home. The current monetary policy supports job creation here in America. Here in Congress, we have no higher priority. 

I thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairman PAUL. I thank the gentleman. 

I would like now to yield to Congressman Luetkemeyer for his 

opening statement. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for 

holding the hearing. And I am pleased to serve on the subcommittee and glad to see that we are focusing on the most important issues facing our constituents: jobs. 

Since 1977, the Federal Reserve has been charged with two principal missions: controlling inflation; and maximizing employment. 

Despite recent attempts by the Fed, unemployment continues to 

hover at 9 percent for the 8th consecutive month, and the economy 

is still struggling, leaving one to wonder if the Fed is capable of 

affecting either or have they mismanaged the situation. 

Then there is the question of whether the Fed should remain to 

have a dual mandate. And that one has been continually debated 

since 1977. It is unclear whether this dual mandate does much of 

anything to promote job growth. 

Take, for example, Chairman Bernanke’s quantitative easing 

plan. When first presented with the Fed’s plan, Americans were 

5 

told that this would be the vehicle to keep interest rates low in 

order to promote job growth and investment. By injecting hundreds 

of billions into the American financial system, the Fed sought to 

promote affordable business investment and economic recovery. 

This was a bold step, one that could ultimately our recovery by contributing to inflation. It is my hope that the $600 billion QE2 will 

promote lending and stimulate growth. 

At the same time, I am concerned that the Fed and other Federal 

regulators seem to be ignoring a key problem: excessive regulation 

along the lines of a lack of forbearance among examiners. As a 

former bank examiner, I believe the lack of responsible forbearance 

practiced by our regulators is imprudent. Time after time, I have 

heard from Missouri bankers who are troubled by increasing pressure from examiners to shrink their portfolios, even when the loans 

are performing. 

I fully support prudent financial regulatory oversight, but it is 

not in our best interest to promote economic policy that denies 

credit for viable projects and forces performing borrowers into insolvency. 

Sound monetary policy will play a role in restoring our Nation’s 

economic stability. We need to energize the private sector and get 

the government out of the way by creating a regulatory environment that protects the American people while promoting economic 

expansion. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you. 

Chairman PAUL. I thank the gentleman. 

I would now like to yield to the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Frank, for an opening statement. 

Mr. FRANK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I would begin by saying I agree with the comments just concluded. We have suffered from excessive rigidity on the part of the 

regulators. We have, on a bipartisan basis, over the past few years, 

the past year in particular, talked about the problem of mixed messages coming from Washington, of the top regulators saying they 

want to encourage lending but of our being told by bankers that 

they are encountering a great deal of excessive rigidity. And we 

will, I hope, continue to press for a reasonable approach on the 

part of the bank examiners. 

And we also have been engaged in conversations with the accounting board so that banks are not forced to take steps that are 

artificial and lock in a temporary problem, with a reduction in 

lending. 

But on the subject of today’s hearing, I was, as the gentleman 

from Missouri was, surprised to see many of my Republican colleagues here and former members of Republican Administrations 

criticizing the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing partly because 

it was unfair to foreign countries. As the gentleman from Missouri 

pointed out, we had people explicitly agreeing with foreign critiques, saying that, among other things, what was wrong with 

what the Federal Reserve was doing was it was damaging the currencies of other countries. And as he noted, the People’s Republic 

of China, in particular, was helping organize opposition to the Federal Reserve. 

6 

Let’s be very clear: Being accused of currency manipulation by 

the People’s Republic of China is like getting a lecture on family 

planning from the Octomom. This is a country which has engaged 

in very serious and significant and systematic manipulation of its 

currency to our economic disadvantage. 

In fact, with regard to what the Federal Reserve has done, the 

negative predictions haven’t come true. We have not seen inflation. 

We have not seen a great set of losses. We now know more about 

what the Federal Reserve is doing. And I know the gentleman from 

Texas does not think we went far enough in what we did last year 

in the bill, but we did make several steps that improved the transparency of what the Federal Reserve does. And under the law that 

we now have in place, no transaction between the Federal Reserve 

and any private entity will remain secret forever. There will be a 

publication of every transaction that the Federal Reserve does with 

any private entity, although, in some cases, with a time lag to prevent there from being market distortion. 

But to go back to this, yes, it is true that unemployment is still 

too high. But when you are dealing with economics, the question 

is not simply what the reality is but what the reality would have 

been in the absence of actions, what the economists call the 

‘‘counterfactual.’’ And I think it is very clear that, as part of an 

overall approach, what the Federal Reserve has done has helped 

bring unemployment down below what it otherwise would have 

been, although not to a satisfactory level. 

But it is very clear that, with regard to the charge that it was 

going to lead to inflation, whether that was going to be very costly 

to the Federal Government, or that the Federal Reserve would be 

engaged in activities which it could not unwind, they have all been 

disproven by the facts. And we do have speculation—inflation may 

be coming later. But there has not been an inflationary problem. 

The problem continues to be the lack of employment to catch up 

with other aspects of growth in the economy. 

And I believe that Mr. Bernanke has been doing, with the overwhelming support of the other members of the Federal Reserve, including—remember, this is not just Mr. Bernanke. There have been 

a couple of dissents, but the Open Market Committee includes 

other appointees, and it includes Federal Reserve Bank presidents. 

They have most recently been unanimous on this. And I think that 

the effect has been a good one. 

And I hope that we will, as a bipartisan approach, tell the rest 

of the world that any suggestion that America should be constrained in what we do to stimulate jobs in this country will be unaffected by their concerns that it might have some impact on their 

own currencies, particularly those whose manipulation of their own 

currencies has been to our disadvantage. 

Chairman PAUL. I thank the gentleman. 

Now, I would like to yield time for an opening statement to Mr. 

Lucas from Oklahoma. 

Mr. LUCAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I appreciate the opportunity to offer an opening statement. 

I would simply observe, I think, that we all realize that the 

Fed’s, in effect, running the printing presses perhaps is the best 

policy alternative they have there right now in this situation. But 

7 

if you believe that price stability ultimately is what the economy 

needs to be rational and make decisions and grow for the long-term 

period, then you have to ask the question: By dramatically increasing the supply of money—yes, the volatility, the circulation of the 

currency, of money through the economy slowed dramatically, so 

that increased supply has been offset by the reduced activity has 

provided price stability or close to it. 

But if the Fed didn’t see this mess coming in the beginning, will 

they see the inflation side in time also? If they didn’t see this mess 

coming, will they see the inflation cycle starting up in time, the recovery in time to turn off the printing press, to shrink the supply, 

to offset the increased speed of circulation before we get into inflation? I am not sure, based on past history, that their vision in the 

future is going to be any better than it was in the past. 

That, I think, is the question. Not so much what other countries 

think, but will we, by the printing press, cause more problems in 

the future than we can overcome? 

I appreciate the opportunity to hear our witnesses, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman PAUL. I thank you. 

I would like to now yield for an opening statement to Mr. Green 

from Texas. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the ranking 

member, as well, and I thank the witnesses for appearing. And, of 

course, I thank the ranking member of the full committee, the Honorable Barney Frank. 

Mr. Chairman, I would like to start on a positive note and say 

that I concur with you 1,000 percent; we do have to ascertain what 

the cause was if we are to truly find a conclusion as to how to resolve the problem. We may differ on what the cause is, but I do 

agree that we have to know what the cause was. 

And I would also concur with you that U6 is a good indicator of 

what the unemployment rate really is when you add all of those 

who are marginally employed. QE1 and QE2 are important because 

they have infused capital into the economy. But when we look at 

the cause and we connect these two, we find that we have to ask 

ourselves, was the cause a lack of regulation or was it overregulation? I suspect not, in terms of over. Was it a case of regulators 

not really regulating? Was it the exotic products? If it was the exotic products, why were the exotic products allowed to exist in the 

first place? 

So there are plenty of questions to ask, and I plan to ask some 

of the witnesses today. 

But with reference to the inflation, I believe that the chairman 

has embarked upon a path that is going to help us have a softer 

landing than we would have but for the QE1 and QE2. Without 

them, it is counterfactual, but there are economists that tell us 

that we would have a landing that may have been a crash, and it 

may have been devastating for the economy, much more so than 

where we are now. 

I thank you for the time. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses. And I yield back. 

Chairman PAUL. I thank the gentleman. 

8 

Now I would like to yield time to Congressman Huizenga from 

Michigan for an opening statement. 

Mr. HUIZENGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity. In the interest of time, I have submitted my remarks, 

as well, and will try to shorten it up. And I appreciate you holding 

this subcommittee hearing today. 

By trade, I am a small-business owner and involved in both real 

estate and construction. And I now represent a district currently 

suffering an unemployment rate well above the national average, 

in Michigan. And one of the hearing’s topics—and this particular 

hearing holds special significance for us back in Michigan. 

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 

the national unemployment rate fell from 9.4 percent to 9 percent. 

That does not include the hundreds of thousands who have, frankly, stopped looking. That equates to 14 million people without a job. 

While this is a staggering number, in my home State of Michigan 

we are far worse off: 11.7 percent. And, again, that is not including 

those who have stopped looking. And in some of the areas in my 

particular district, along the lakeshore, it is well over double the 

national average. 

As previously mentioned, I am a small-business owner at heart 

and believe such businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy 

and provide more than two-thirds of American jobs. I understand 

the universal principles of successful business, and it is important 

that we recognize the appropriate role for government in that process. Simply put, the private sector creates jobs, not the public sector. And that is ultimately where that prosperity lies. 

It is clear to all small-business owners that responsible fiscal policy includes reduced government spending and the implementation 

of friendly tax and regulatory environments. They go a long way 

in creating an atmosphere for success. 

As we are having this discussion on QE1 and QE2, ultimately I 

believe that they have not proven to be an effective method in creating jobs. And I appreciate today us examining the effects that the 

Federal Reserve open market operations have on those long- and 

short-term unemployment rates. And, in addition, I look forward to 

carefully inspecting what potential role the Fed policies played in 

such artificial asset bubbles as that of the housing market between 

2001 and 2008. 

So I look forward to today’s, I would guess, robust conversation 

on the short-term effects. And I appreciate your holding this hearing, Mr. Chairman. So thank you very much. I yield back. 

Chairman PAUL. I thank the gentleman. 

Now, I would like to yield time to Congresswoman Hayworth 

from New York, a new member to the committee. 

Dr. HAYWORTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

My home district is New York’s 19th. It is the Hudson Valley. 

And we have a large portion of our constituency who have jobs in 

the financial services sector. And, frankly, all of our citizens are 

quite directly affected by what the Federal Reserve is doing and 

has done in the past. So I am honored to be working on this subcommittee, because examining the role of monetary policy in the financial crisis and in our response to it is crucial. 

9 

History shows that an independent central bank that is making 

monetary decisions free of political influence can certainly enhance 

economic growth. It stabilizes the currency. That is very important. 

But that is very different from requiring a central bank to be held 

accountable for its decisions and to explain why it is making them. 

And it is certainly incumbent upon us to set that policy for monitoring and holding accountable. 

So that is our role here. And we are in service of the far larger 

goal, as my colleague from Michigan has said, of getting Americans 

back to work throughout the country. So I look forward to your testimony regarding how monetary policy has affected unemployment. 

I am sure it has. 

And I yield back the remainder of my time. Thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Chairman PAUL. Thank you. 

The Congressman from North Carolina, Walter Jones, has arrived. He is the vice chairman of this committee. 

Would you like to make an opening statement? 

Mr. JONES. No. 

Chairman PAUL. We would like to announce and celebrate the 

notion that Walter is going to have a birthday tomorrow. So we 

want to wish him a happy birthday. 

Mr. JONES. Thank you. 

Chairman PAUL. Okay. If we don’t have any more opening statements, we are going to go to the guests that we have, those who 

are going to testify. I want to welcome all three of the individuals 

here today. And I will read a brief resume of each one, and then 

we will go to the discussion. 

First, on the left, we have Professor Thomas DiLorenzo, professor 

of economics at the Sellinger School of Business at Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland, and a senior fellow at the Ludwig von 

Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University at 

Virginia Tech. 

Next, will be Professor Richard Vedder, the Edwin and Ruth 

Kennedy Distinguished Professor of Economics at Ohio University 

and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He 

received his B.A. in economics from Northwestern University and 

his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois. He 

is the author of, ‘‘Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in 

Twentieth-Century America.’’ 

And finally, we will hear from Dr. Josh Bivens, an economist at 

the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. He received his 

B.A. in economics from the University of Maryland and his Ph.D. 

in economics from the New School of Social Research. 

Each will be given time for an opening statement, and their full 

statements will be put into the record. 

So I will first now defer to Dr. DiLorenzo. 

STATEMENT OF THOMAS J. DILORENZO, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, SELLINGER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND 

Mr. DILORENZO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the 

committee for giving me this opportunity to appear here. 

10 

To answer the basic question that has been posed by this hearing, can monetary policy really create jobs, as an academic economist, you are not surprised to hear from me that the answer is ‘‘yes 

and no.’’ 

And the reason why I say ‘‘yes and no’’ is that the history of the 

Fed has been that it has created boom-and-bust cycles in the economy ever since it began its existence in 1914. And so, during the 

boom period, of course, it does create jobs, but the jobs that it creates, many of them are unsustainable jobs. I can recall hearing 

that Home Depot, when they laid off 7,000 people in 1 day, these 

were jobs that people had invested in, they invested their lives, 

their careers, and then the rug was pulled out from under them. 

That is the sort of thing that happens with what we call the artificial boom and bust created by the Fed’s monetary policies. 

And the key to it is that the monetary expansion that the Fed 

creates, it sometimes produces price inflation, but that is not the 

only problem. Another part of the problem is that it artificially lowers interest rates and induces businesses to engage in especially 

long-term investments that end up being unsustainable. 

In the latest boom-and-bust cycle, that was mostly in real estate 

and everything related to real estate. But it is not necessarily just 

real estate. And so, in this latest cycle then, you had people, mortgage bankers and insurance companies and everyone related in 

every way to housing construction investing years and years of 

their careers, and then they are out of work; they have to retool. 

The lower interest rates are not necessarily an unmixed blessing 

to everyone because they tend to reduce savings, and savings and 

investment are the key to productivity growth and job creation. 

And so, the downside of the Fed policy of lowering interest rates 

lower and lower is that it deters savings. And savings investment 

is really the key to having sustainable economic growth and job 

creation. 

The real damage occurs, then, during the boom cycle of the business cycle, where capital is misallocated. Too much of it goes into 

unsustainable areas, such as real estate in the latest bout here. 

And the best part, the good part, if you can say there is a good part 

to this boom-and-bust cycle, is now the bust is where the adjustments have to take place. And we have to get back to realistic 

prices, realistic interest rates. 

One problem the Fed creates, though, is, with its constant manipulation of interest rates, it really is an attempt at price controls. 

And I think the economics profession is almost unanimous in opposition against price controls. And interest rates are prices. And so, 

when the Fed tries to manipulate interest rates, it is really engaging in a policy of price controls. And a lot of people in this room, 

I am sure, remember what a disaster that was in the 1970s, with 

price controls on oil and gas. 

Now, government policies that bail out businesses, which we 

have seen, is really a contradiction of an age-old rule of economics 

with regard to monetary policy. The rule was, in the case of a recession like this, it is a good idea for the Fed to make credit available to sound businesses that have been responsible and made good 

decisions, but not make more credit available to those businesses 

who have made bad decisions. And it is better off to let them go 

11 

bankrupt, out of business, and have those resources be picked up, 

reallocated by people who will make better use of them. But, of 

course, the Fed has done exactly the opposite of that in the recent 

years. 

And so, as applied to today’s situation, I think a very strong case 

could be made that the cause of the boom was the Greenspan Fed’s 

low-interest policies. So the Fed did create some jobs with the 

boom; it is responsible for creating those jobs. But I think it is also 

responsible for the high unemployment that we now suffer to a 

very large extent because of the bust that has occurred. 

It also has created mismatched unemployment, what economists 

used to call mismatched unemployment, which I referred to a 

minute ago, in terms of people investing in jobs and careers that 

ultimately are not sustainable for a long period of time. 

Historically, the Fed, right from the very beginning, as soon as 

it started in 1914, it doubled the money supply by that date in 

1920 and created the Depression of 1920. It was the worst depression in the first year of the Great Depression. And a strong case 

can be made—and I can refer any of the Members to literature if 

they would ask me for it, as to where you can read up on how the 

boom and bust of the 1920s was caused by the Fed, as was, I would 

even argue, the Great Depression was ignited by the expansionary 

monetary policy of the Fed, not the restrictive monetary policy of 

the Fed, that occurred from 1929 to 1932. 

I see my time is about up. So, in summary, I will say that the 

Fed’s monetary policies do create temporary but unsustainable increases in employment, while being the very engine of recession 

and depression, even, that creates unemployment in the long run. 

And it needs to step back, in my view, and let the market work 

and create a lot more stability by quitting its attempts to manipulate the price of credit, interest rates. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. DiLorenzo can be found on page 

72 of the appendix.] 

Chairman PAUL. I thank the gentleman. 

I would like to now defer to Professor Vedder for his statement. 

STATEMENT OF RICHARD K. VEDDER, DISTINGUISHED 

PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, OHIO UNIVERSITY 

Mr. VEDDER. Thank you, Dr. Paul. 

The one-word executive summary of my answer to the hearing’s 

question, can monetary policy really create jobs, the one-word answer is ‘‘no.’’ And I would agree with Dr. DiLorenzo, no, not in the 

long run, or no, not on a sustainable basis. 

A little historical context: The first decade of this century had 

the lowest rate of economic growth of any decade since the Great 

Depression. Employment growth was the lowest in 6 decades. Inflation-adjusted equity prices fell sharply. 

In large part, I think this reflects a multitude of faulty government policies, certainly on the fiscal side. Federal spending soared, 

increasingly financed by borrowing. The ratio of national debt to 

output is at a historic high for a relatively peaceful period. And on 

the monetary side, we had the worst financial crisis since the Depression, with many iconic financial institutions closing their doors 

12 

or only surviving because of Federal bailouts. And despite all these 

huge Federal exertions on both the fiscal and monetary side, we 

have had the weakest recovery going on now in the lifetime of most 

persons in this room. 

Moreover, I think the huge run-up in the ratio of Federal debt 

to output will be a significant drag on the economy for many years 

and may well lead the Fed to monetize this debt or part of this 

debt, unleashing a wave of inflation that can only undermine our 

economy. 

Turning to the 2008 fiscal crisis, financial crisis, certainly private 

irrational exuberance may have occurred to some extent. The crisis 

largely resulted from three types of government policies, failures. 

First, as Tom DiLorenzo indicated, the Federal Reserve for years 

prior to the crisis pursued an easy money policy, reducing interest 

rates below levels justified by human behavior and market conditions. This led to the artificial boom in housing prices. 

Second, the Feds encouraged imprudent lending practices 

through such things as the Community Reinvestment Act, HUD 

policies going back to the 1990s designed to promote homeownership. 

Third, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored corporations, promoted totally inappropriate lending practices that 

contributed to the housing bubble and the foreclosure mess. Congress blocked attempts to rein in these companies, no doubt, frankly, because of the campaign contributions these companies made to 

Members of this body. 

I am an economic historian. And both economics and historical 

experience demonstrate that Federal intrusions into economic activity are counterproductive. Some textbooks even talk about the 

‘‘policy ineffectiveness theorem.’’ Aggressive deficit spending and 

Federal Reserve monetary expansion led to stagflation in the 

1970s. Japan went on a huge binge of stimulus spending in the 

1990s, and economic growth virtually ground to a halt. The excesses of the European welfare state and its funding are causing 

crises all over the European Union, from Ireland to Greece. The 

stimulus plans of the Obama Administration were accompanied by 

rising, not falling, unemployment. Bailouts and ‘‘too-big-to-fail’’ 

policies have created a huge moral hazard problem. The Federal 

Reserve has engaged in huge purchases of government long-term 

bonds and mortgages to keep interest rates low. But long-term interest rates are not falling, as concerns about potential inflation 

justifiably have risen. 

So, by many indicators, this is the weakest post-war recovery, 

not because we have tried too little, but because we have tried too 

much. The Fed and the government have monetary and fiscal time 

bombs that are threatening both the short-term recovery but, more 

importantly, long-term financial and economic stability. 

So what do you do? I would point out that our economy achieved 

economic supremacy in the world from 1871 to 1914, a period of the 

gold standard, near-stable prices, and no central bank. Consumer 

prices in 1914 were within 10 percent of what they were in 1871. 

We can learn from that experience. 

To restore monetary stability, ideally we would ultimately consider retreating somewhat from the fractional reserve banking sysVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:06 Mar 29, 2011 Jkt 064552 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64552.TXT TERRIE
13 

tem we have, where even moderate declines in confidence potentially lead to devastating consequences. But more immediately, we 

need to limit monetary growth. And, given human weaknesses, 

probably the best way to do this ultimately is having a gold standard or some variant that removes or dramatically reduces the discretion of central bankers. 

But on the fiscal side, politicians, unfettered by rules, behave, I 

would say, like unsupervised alcoholics in liquor stores. We need 

some sort of constitutional restraints on government fiscal actions. 

Practically, changes of this magnitude take time, but, in the short 

run, however, I think you could start holding the Fed’s feet to the 

fire. Perhaps, for starters, you should establish price stability as 

the single monetary mandate for the Fed. Perhaps you should repeal the Humphrey-Hawkins Act and privatize or abolish Fannie 

Mae or Freddie Mac. 

After that, you can rest on Sunday. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Vedder can be found on page 77 

of the appendix.] 

Chairman PAUL. I thank the gentleman. 

We will move on now to Dr. Josh Bivens for his statement. 

STATEMENT OF JOSH BIVENS, MACROECONOMIST, ECONOMIC 

POLICY INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Mr. BIVENS. Thank you. I would like to thank the committee and 

the chairman for inviting me here today. 

The subject of this hearing is, can monetary policy really create 

jobs? I am going to say the answer is a barely equivocal ‘‘yes,’’ and 

the equivocation just being it can create jobs as long as the economy is performing below potential. And the economy is performing 

below potential today. 

The argument—I am going to start with just a little bit of theory. 

Of course, theory alone can’t end the discussion, so then I will talk 

about some evidence on monetary policy’s effects. 

So the theory—sometimes the cause of recessions are pretty hard 

to reconstruct. Not so in what we are now calling the ‘‘great recession.’’ The bursting of the housing bubble led to home builders waking up, realized they had massively overbuilt, so residential investment collapsed. The 30 percent fall in home prices also erased 

about $7 trillion in wealth from household balance sheets, so they 

predictably radically curtailed their spending. 

These initial shocks then cascaded throughout the economy. 

Businesses stopped investing because customers aren’t coming in 

the door. Why would you build a new factory when the one you 

have can’t even sell what it is producing? 

And so, in the jargon—and, for once, the jargon is kind of important—the economy suffered a shock to aggregate demand. The clear 

fact that this recession was the result of a shock to aggregate demand is key. Americans workers didn’t lose their skills in December 2007. American factories didn’t become obsolete in that month. 

American managers didn’t forget how to organize production in 

that month. Nothing changed about the American economy’s ability 

to supply goods and services. All that changed was the ability of 

households and businesses to purchase them. The erasure of all the 

wealth from the housing bubble was a shock to aggregate demand. 

14 

So what the Fed tried to do is stabilize economic activity by providing a countervailing spur to demand with the levers they have. 

The primary lever they have is short-term interest rates. By lowering these short-term rates, or policy rates, the hope is that interest rates up and down the term and risk structure fall in sympathy. That makes it cheaper for businesses to borrow to expand 

capacity. That makes it cheaper for households to borrow to buy 

new houses, and durable goods. It also provides a one-time boost 

to asset prices. And so this decline in policy interest rates is meant 

to provide a countervailing, positive spur to the aggregate demand 

that was quashed by the bursting of the housing bubble. 

And all this happened as the great recession approached. The 

Fed started cutting these policy rates in August 2007. They provided extraordinary support to failing financial institutions early in 

2008. And about halfway through the great recession, the policy 

rates they controlled had kind of run out of ammunition. They were 

sitting at zero. 

They could have just stopped there. As the economy was in a 

complete free fall, as the primary parachute they have available to 

them obviously wasn’t sufficient, they could have stopped there. 

They didn’t. And it is a good thing they didn’t. They continued to 

try to find other ways to provide support to the economy with the 

quantitative easing programs. 

And these interventions worked. If you look at when the Fed introduced the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the day 

that was introduced, credit spreads on asset-backed securities 

started to rapidly fall. That was very good for the economy. It 

meant people could actually get credit again. 

Researchers from the San Francisco Fed say that the announcements of both rounds of quantitative easing caused interest rates 

to fall up and down the term structure. Some of the members of 

the committee may have noticed that 30-year home mortgages fell 

to something like 4 percent in the past couple of months. Some of 

us in this room may have even refinanced their mortgages. I actually did. It saved me a lot of money, and provided a spur to my 

spending power. That is very good for the economy. That is one 

channel that is supposed to work. 

Just that channel alone, the ability to refinance, some researchers at JPMorgan Chase have estimated that, if all the mortgages 

guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had been able to take 

advantage of those 4 percent rates we saw a couple of months ago 

and refinance, that would be a permanent $50 billion spur to 

spending potential in the economy. That is just one channel 

through which monetary policy can help people start spending 

again, and businesses. 

And if you look back, you look at studies of what ended the Great 

Depression, Christina Romer, eminent economic historian, the 

former CEA chair for the Obama Administration, she says that 

monetary easing was a key part of what ended the Great Depression. I would say she is actually criticized in this view by, say, Milton Friedman, probably the most famous conservative economist, 

only because he thinks the Fed should have done much more, loosened much more to fight the Great Depression. 

15 

If you look at Adam Posen, probably the closest observer of what 

happened in Japan in the 1990s, he points to the fact that Japan 

actually had a pretty good recovery from 2002 to 2008 when they 

finally started engaging in the unconventional monetary easing 

that the Fed has done during the great recession. It was the first 

time Japan had seen serious growth in decades. 

The Japanese case is also instructive because they had a 20-year 

period where they kept the short-term interest rates that they controlled, the Bank of Japan, near zero. They engaged in lots of quantitative easing. The cumulative inflation rate over those 2 decades 

was less than 5 percent. The United States has seen inflation of 

over 5 percent, or close to 5 percent, in a single year in the 2000s. 

So this idea that monetary easing always leads to inflation, no 

matter what, is just not supported by the facts. 

And so, my time is up, and I just want to say one thing. I would 

say that the Fed has been by far the policymaking institution most 

aggressive in its response to the job crisis caused by the great recession. It acted first, it acted most aggressively, and it continues 

to display a real sense of urgency about the need to support the 

economy and create jobs. 

Thank you for your attention. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Bivens can be found on page 51 

of the appendix.] 

Chairman PAUL. I thank the gentleman. 

We will now go into our question session. Each Member gets 5 

minutes to ask questions. 

And just to let you know that if the discussion is still going on, 

we will have a second or even a third round of questions if you are 

interested in the subject and you want to hang around. 

First, I will start off with asking Dr. Bivens a question, because 

you have talked a little bit about interest rates and how valuable 

it has been to the economy for the Fed to lower interest rates. But 

isn’t it true that there comes a point where they can’t accomplish 

that, where the effort to lower interest rates doesn’t actually lower 

interest rates? 

And we may be even entering that period right now. There is a 

lot of monetary inflation right now with QE2, and there are signs 

that bonds aren’t doing as well and they may be shifting. 

What happens to those who agree with your policy? What do they 

do if the more they inflate, the higher the interest rate goes? And, 

in a way, we had that in the 1970s, as well. Then what do you do? 

What is the policy that is necessary to counteract that when interest rates are going up when you don’t want them to go up? 

Mr. BIVENS. A couple of things—one, you mentioned the experience of the 1970s. To me, the experience of the 1970s, why interest 

rates were high was because inflation rates were high. And so, my 

best guess over the next couple of years—and it is a guess based 

on a firm historical relationship between how much slack is in the 

economy and inflation rates—we do not have to worry about spiking inflation in the economy any time in the next couple of years. 

So your scenario where the Fed continues to ease, maybe undertakes even another round of quantitative easing and somehow interest rates in the long term start rising, I would say they would 

need to reassess the policy then. But my read of the evidence so 

16 

far is that, with each announcement of the rounds of quantitative 

easing, you have seen a robust fall in interest rates across the risk 

and term structure, which was exactly the target. And it has filtered through to more spending in the economy. 

Chairman PAUL. I thank you. 

And I would like to get a comment from Dr. Vedder or Dr. 

DiLorenzo on that subject. 

Mr. VEDDER. Let’s first talk about—the QE2 was announced on 

November 3rd. It is now February 9th. What has happened to the 

interest rates on 10-year or 30-year Federal Government securities 

in that interim? My read of the evidence—and I just look at the 

interest rate yesterday versus November 3rd—is that the interest 

rate on 30-year government bonds has risen somewhere between 65 

and 70 basis points. The interest rates on 10-year notes has gone 

up more than 100 basis points. This has not moved down. It is not 

even staying still. It is going up. 

Now, in that period, we are buying, what, $50 billion of bonds 

a month? We bought several hundred billion—the Fed now owns a 

trillion dollars’ worth of long-term securities, I believe, or close to 

it, the better part of that. 

To me, that is just the evidence. And it suggests that your concern, Dr. Paul, is correct, that the increased inflationary expectations have overwhelmed the effects, the immediate effects the Fed 

has when it pushes up bond prices when it buys securities. So I 

think your concern is valid. 

Mr. DILORENZO. Yes, I agree, that is what we are seeing, is inflationary expectations driving up those interest rates. And it might 

not be hyperinflation, but we are beginning to see it. And you have 

seen some of the inflation around the world, too. A lot of the U.S. 

dollars that are in circulation end up overseas. And I think there 

is probably a connection between the high food prices that you are 

seeing in different places around the world with this inflation. 

But that is not the only problem that can be created by monetary 

expansion. It is the misallocation of resources. The Fed is creating 

a different kind of boom with its quantitative easing. And no one 

can predict what will happen, but in the next couple of years we 

could see another bubble. And I think it is likely to be much bigger 

than the housing bubble was. And then we will really be in trouble. 

Chairman PAUL. I would like to ask Dr. Bivens first about his 

statement on page 7. He says, in short, the Fed saw the economic 

downturn coming before any other major macroeconomic policymaker body. And there have been a lot of others. What do you do 

with the free-market Austrian economists? And there were more 

than a few. How do you dismiss them so easily? Because they did 

predict it correctly. 

Mr. BIVENS. Yes, I would absolutely not say the Fed was the first 

to see it coming of any economist. I have colleagues who warned 

in 2002 that home prices were getting too high. I meant to say they 

were the first major macroeconomic policymaking institution. They 

acted first. 

There are three big arms of macroeconomic stabilization: there is 

fiscal policy, Congress; there is monetary policy, the Fed; and there 

is exchange rate policy controlled by the Treasury. And of those 

17 

three institutions, the first one to start providing lots of easing to 

the U.S. economy was the Fed. 

Chairman PAUL. Okay. My time is about up, but I just want to 

go on to the next speaker by quoting Mr. Bernanke, and this was 

in the fourth quarter of 2007: ‘‘We may see somewhat better economic conditions during the second half of 2008. This baseline forecast is consistent with our recently released projections, which also 

see growth picking up.’’ 

He had no idea that it was coming. He was so reassuring, and 

he misled so many people. And I just think there is a lot—and if 

I had more time, I would get other comments, but maybe later on. 

But it just seems like the Fed was way behind on this whole issue. 

I would hate to think they were the first ones to warn us. I think 

they were the last ones to even recognize what was going on. 

Okay. And I will now yield to the ranking member, Mr. Clay. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, again, let me commend you for calling this hearing. The causes of unemployment 

and how government and the private sector can respond to and 

mitigate this crisis are extremely important. And I thank you for 

your leadership on this issue right at the start of this Congress. 

Dr. DiLorenzo, you belong to the Austrian school. And we don’t 

have time for a debate on various economic theories. However, the 

Austrian school is different from mainstream theories in its lack of 

a scientific method and rejection of empirical data. You don’t use 

the scientific method and instead employ deductive reasoning. You 

apply preconceived generalizations to your work. You are kind of 

asking us to take your word for it. 

Without data, without providing verifiable results, it is difficult 

for others to evaluate the merits of your work, and we must rely 

on your body of work itself. 

Doctor, you are here today representing yourself as an economist. 

However, it has been difficult for my staff to locate any recent work 

of yours as an economist. It seems that for the past 15 years or so 

you have published books, written many articles, and given lectures as an historian. 

The lines among the social sciences can sometimes get blurry, 

and I am not going to quibble about academic distinctions. But if 

your work was on labor history, historical patterns of unemployment, even the history of the Federal Reserve on monetary policy, 

I can understand you being here today. But I am a little confused. 

It seems to me that the bulk of your work has been in revisionist 

history about our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil 

War. 

Also—and this is where my confusion deepens to concern—you 

work for a Southern nationalist organization that espouses very 

radical notions about American history and the Federal Government. This organization, The League of the South, has been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Now, the Law Center is an organization that I deeply respect, 

and so naturally this concerns me. The League of the South is a 

neoconfederate group that advocates for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by European Americans. It officially 

classifies the U.S. Government as an organized criminal enterprise. 

18 

Dr. DiLorenzo, you are listed on their Web site as teaching for 

their League of the South Institute. A short list of your many articles includes: ‘‘More Lies About the Civil War’’; ‘‘The First DictatorPresident’’, referring to Abraham Lincoln; ‘‘In Defense of Sedition’’; 

‘‘Libelist Leftist Lynch Mobs,’’ insensitively using a loaded term to 

refer to academic criticism of a White professor; ‘‘Abe the Mass 

Murderer’’; ‘‘Hurrah for ‘Sweatshops’’’—I guess you could sort of 

claim that the title at least is somewhat connected or something to 

do with economics; and ‘‘Hitler Was a Lincolnite.’’ 

After reviewing your work and the so-called methods you employ, 

I still do not understand your being invited to testify today on the 

unemployment crisis, but I do know that I have no questions for 

you. 

Let me go to Dr. Bivens. 

And there are some factual errors in the testimony presented 

here today that I believe need to be corrected. First, even though 

it was suggested that it was the excessive expansionary monetary 

policy of the Fed that caused yet another boom-and-bust cycle that 

spawned the Great Depression, the facts do not bear this out. 

And, according to congressional research, between 1925 and December of 1928, the money supply increased at a very modest rate 

of 3.4 percent. Even if we look at a larger timeframe from July of 

1921 to July of 1929, it grew at a rate of 4.8 percent per year. 

There is nothing particularly rapid about these rates, much less 

anything approaching excessive expansion. 

Dr. Bivens, can you confirm this for us? 

Mr. BIVENS. The exact numbers, no. But they definitely comport 

with my sense of that period, which is there was no excessive monetary expansion before the Great Depression. And even again, Milton Friedman, conservative economist, if he has a criticism of the 

Fed during the Great Depression, it is that they did not ease quickly enough, they did not provide enough monetary support to the 

economy. So they comport with my sense of what happened during 

that period. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for responding. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Chairman PAUL. I now yield to Congressman Jones from North 

Carolina. 

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and thank you 

for holding this hearing. 

I want to thank the panelists. 

And, Mr. Chairman, about a week ago, I decided that the frustration of the American people in the 3rd District of North Carolina, 

which I represent, was so great and their disappointment in the 

United States Congress and things we have done—talking about 

both parties—that I would take it upon myself to say, if you will 

help me with questions for the panelists for this whole year—I am 

delighted to be on this subcommittee, by the way—that I will use 

some of your questions when my time comes. 

So, Mr. Chairman, in a week’s time, we got over a thousand emails from my district. I am going to read two; then I want to get 

to a point: 

‘‘Our Congress Members, for the most part, must be the most financially illiterate group of men and women on the planet. Why 

19 

would they need a study group on domestic monetary policy and 

technology to figure out you don’t print more money to create jobs 

that are backed by virtual money, or funny money? I believe we 

need to fire all these people and get a couple of housewives who 

have been managing their family budget over the years without 

credit cards, lines of credit, and other creative ways to rob Peter 

to pay Paul.’’ 

This is a great example of how frustrated the American people 

are. That is why I do think this hearing today is important. 

Let me read the next one; then I want to get to the question: 

‘‘As an owner of small businesses and a family borrower, I have 

not understood how the Federal Reserve can keep its interest rates 

at almost zero and then make lendable funds more available to the 

banks, while at the same time the banks have increased interest 

rates, decreased lines of credit, and restricted availability of loans 

to high-rated creditors like my businesses and other households. I 

can only see that the banks have improved their financial position 

on the backs of small businesses and families.’’ 

That basically is going to be my question. I am very frustrated; 

I am sure my colleagues in both parties are, as well. What you 

hear back home is this issue of how the banks have been empowered with the Federal Reserve and the other agencies so that they 

are able to swell their financial state and, at the same time, they 

are saying to those of us who are creditors, we are going to raise 

your interest rates on your credit cards, we are going to deny you 

loans because we have a certain criteria now. 

And this is why this country is in deep trouble, and it is going 

to continue in deep trouble. And that is why I think it is important 

that we hold these hearings about monetary policy, because the average American is out there strangling to death because of things 

that we do and don’t do here in Washington. 

How would you answer the question to that constituent who 

wrote me that question? Anyone who would like to answer. 

Mr. VEDDER. I think your constituent ought to be made a member of the Council of Economic Advisors or something of—it 

wouldn’t be any worse than it is now, maybe a little bit better. 

Why are interest rates for the ordinary—why are people not borrowing a lot of money now? Is it because—the reason, of course, 

is—why are businesses sitting on $2 trillion in cash, roughly, right 

now? They are sitting on $2 trillion. You can have interest—interest rates don’t matter. I don’t say they don’t matter. They are not 

the key thing. 

They are scared. People are scared. They are scared of a $4 trillion increase in the Federal debt over the last 3 years. The housewife may not be sure why that is bad, but she knows that is basically not a good thing to do. She knows that printing money and 

dropping it out of airplanes, or the equivalent, which is what the 

Fed does, will not create jobs, will not create wealth. It might temporarily lead to some behavioral modifications that leave the appearance of some stimulus in the short run, but not in the long 

run. 

I happen to like Abraham Lincoln, by the way, and I went to the 

Lincoln Memorial today to read the Gettysburg Address. And I noticed that they have torn up—that they have drained the reflecting 

20 

pool. And there is a sign in front of it that says, this is part of the 

stimulus—whatever, the reinvestment—I don’t remember the name 

of that thing—reinvestment act. And they also had a sign next to 

it that said, we are going to fill it back up again. We can drain the 

reflecting pool and fill it back up again and probably put a few people to work for a day or 2, but that doesn’t create jobs. 

People are scared. And banks have partly raised interest rates, 

to get more specific, on some types of credit because they feel they 

have to because of the Dodd-Frank bill. Another thing, when they 

see light at the end of the tunnel, you add on more tunnel. Not you, 

personally, Congressman, but your colleagues add more tunnel. 

And we have added more tunnel. 

So we have the Dodd-Frank bill that has all kinds of new restrictions on banks and financial institutions. They have to make up 

the money somewhere. They are not going to just simply say, oh, 

we are going to let our profits fall to zero, and we are going to become a charitable institution, a not-for-profit. That is not the way 

banks operate. So they have raised a lot of fees and so forth. So 

that has added to the frustration. 

Mr. JONES. Would you like— 

Mr. BIVENS. Yes, could I have a very quick response to that, as 

well? 

I will say one thing. If you look at the survey of small businesses, 

the National Federation of Independent Business recently over the 

past year, you ask them, what is the number-one problem facing 

you, overwhelming highest response in history: sales; there are no 

customers. 

And so then the question is, can monetary policy actually create 

some customers for those businesses? And it absolutely can. When 

you saw the ability to refinance mortgages at 4 percent, that freed 

up a lot of money for households. When you lower interests up and 

down the term and risk structure, you make it much cheaper for 

businesses who are on that razor’s edge—‘‘Should I borrow a little 

money to expand? It is uncertain out there’’—but you make it much 

easier for them to do that. 

And the idea that there are inflationary expectations driving up 

long-term rates, there just are not. The clearest indicator of inflationary expectations that economists use is the tip spread, the 

spread between inflation index treasuries and nominals. That was 

at historically low levels a couple of months ago. Now it is still 

below 2 percent lower than it was at any point during the 2000s. 

There is just no sign that inflationary expectations are out of line 

and that is what is driving anything like long-term rates rising. 

And then just one last thing. I am no defender of the banks, but, 

actually, if you are worried the banks are having too easy of a time 

by borrowing cheap, short term from the Fed, and then raising long 

rates on what they are lending to their customers, quantitative easing actually squashes that spread. It actually makes it less hospitable for banks to do that. So if you don’t like the banks, kind 

of, riding the easy term structure created by what the Fed is doing 

to short-term rates, you should like the quantitative easing program. 

Mr. JONES. Thank you. 

Mr. DILORENZO. Is there time for one more comment on that? 

21 

Chairman PAUL. Go ahead. 

Mr. DILORENZO. I would add, since I have written three books 

that include a history of banking, so contrary to what Mr. Clay had 

to say about me, what we have been experiencing is what economists call ‘‘regime uncertainty.’’ With all the uncertainty of the Fed 

changing policy month by month—the threat of huge taxes for socialized medicine, the re-regulation of banking with the DoddFrank bill—businesses sit back and wait because there is so much 

great uncertainty about the future with all of these regulatory 

changes and tax changes. 

And that is one of the things that is keeping them from lending 

to businesses. The businesses are putting a lot of their business 

plans on hold. And the economist Robert Higgs is best known for 

research on this whole area of regime uncertainty, and I think that 

is an important thing to factor in there. 

Chairman PAUL. I now yield 5 minutes to the Congressman from 

Texas, Mr. Green. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank the witnesses, as well, again. 

What we have, apparently, is this philosophical debate about 

how jobs are created. Do millionaires create jobs, or do millionaires 

simply respond to demand and, as a result, they facilitate the creation of jobs because there is demand? 

Smart money doesn’t create jobs just because it exists. Smart 

money creates jobs when there is a demand to be met. Is that, in 

essence, what you are trying to say or have been saying, Dr. 

Bivens? 

Mr. BIVENS. Yes, I think that is a fair summary. 

Mr. GREEN. And is it true, sir, that jobs and employment, that 

these factors are considered lagging economic indicators, employment? 

Mr. BIVENS. That is right. I think that is fair to say, as well. The 

last couple of recessions, you have seen GDP go up. 

Mr. GREEN. Right. And while other things will come back at a 

relatively different pace—let’s say it this way: Jobs will be among 

the last things that will return, especially when you have a sharp 

downturn in the economy. And it is also fair to say that, because 

of some of the structural changes in the economy, there are some 

jobs that won’t return. Is this a fair statement? 

Mr. BIVENS. I think we will have a different-looking economy 

coming out of this than we did. We are going to have fewer construction jobs when we eventually get out of this and get out of the 

jobs hole. Hopefully we have some more manufacturing jobs. So, 

yes, I think there is something to that. 

Mr. GREEN. Also, changes in technology. A few years ago, we had 

technology that was greatly different. Something as simple as developing film, the technology has changed. So you won’t have those 

jobs. Record companies won’t have jobs. The structure of the economy is changing as well. 

So I would like for you, if you would, to just do this for me. Take 

a moment and explain, if you would, how the lagging indicator of 

jobs returning, employment, how that will manifest itself as we go 

forward. Is that something that will happen immediately, or will 

we see signs of it? 

22 

And, also, does it rise and fall based upon people who are out of 

the employment market coming back into the market? Does that 

then cause the job numbers to go up again? And then as more people are employed, it comes down again? Please talk about it. 

Mr. BIVENS. Yes, you raise a lot of interesting points. 

First, I will say that the observation that jobs are a lagging indicator should absolutely not be taken as ‘‘everything is fine, and the 

jobs will come back,’’ even at the current pace of economic growth. 

That is not the case. If you want jobs to come back really quickly, 

you need to boost economic growth that much quicker. And so I 

would say monetary ease. 

But, yes, then the other issue is, you are right. If you look at the 

number of jobs lost between 2007 and today, it is roughly 7 million. 

But we should have created well over 3 million in that time period 

just to keep pace with population growth. Those people who didn’t 

join the labor force over the past 3 years will start joining it if jobs 

start becoming available again. And so that means the unemployment rate is going to be very, very stubborn in coming down over 

the next couple of years, even if we get some good output growth, 

some good employment growth. 

But that said, if you look at the agonizingly slow recovery, the 

2001 recession, or the very slow recovery of today compared to the 

quick recovery of the early 1980s; the thing that distinguishes 

them is that output grew much faster in the 1980s. And part of 

what explains that output growth, as I say in my written testimony, is the Fed had a lot of room to provide a lot of monetary support to the economy, and they did. They cut interest rates by 10 

percent. That sparked both output and jobs growth. 

So I think you are right. I think, even as jobs come back, the unemployment rate is going to be very, very stubborn because of all 

those jobs that were not created. But we really should say we cannot be satisfied with this pace of economic growth. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. 

Let me quickly respond to something that was said about the 

CRA, and Fannie and Freddie to a certain extent. We do have to 

make a distinction between causes and contributing factors. The 

CRA did not create 3/27s, 2/28s, teaser rates that coincided with 

prepayment penalties, no-doc loans. All of these exotic products 

were not created by the CRA. It may have been a contributing factor, Fannie may have been a contributing factor, as well as 

Freddie. But we shouldn’t label contributing factors as causes. 

These products that were created were created in an environment where you had either a lack of regulation or regulators that 

were not properly adhering to regulations, following the law, making others follow the law. 

Mr. Bevins, could you just comment on this briefly? 

Mr. BIVENS. Yes, I think I agree with all of that. The idea that 

especially Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were prime drivers of the 

housing bubble just doesn’t work when you look at the evidence. 

As the housing bubble gets under way in the early 2000s, as 

home prices go through the roof, and as these exotic mortgages 

come online, Fannie and Freddie hemorrhage market share. They 

lose it to all of the private servicers. 

23 

They, unfortunately, start to try to get into the game a little 

later in the decade, and they shouldn’t have. That is clear. But 

they were not—they were followers. They were absolutely not leaders. And so, the idea that the housing bubble can be laid at their 

feet, I think, is just wrongheaded. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman PAUL. I now yield 5 minutes to Congressman Luetkemeyer from Missouri. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

A while ago, Dr. DiLorenzo, you talked about another bubble 

coming. Can you elaborate on that just a little bit? 

Mr. DILORENZO. With all the so-called quantitative easing that 

the Fed is engaging in, it is more of the same policy that created 

the real estate bubble in the first place. And, at that time, it reallocated a lot of capital into housing and housing-related industries. 

And so, even if we are not seeing price inflation, we have all this 

credit out there, the potential for lending. And, of course, the banks 

aren’t lending as much as a lot of people would like to see them 

lend. 

And so we can’t really predict where the next bubble will be, but 

it was in the stock market—before the housing bubble, there was 

a stock market bubble. And the Fed responded to that bubble with 

the policy of low interest rates that created the housing bubble. 

And so I fear that we are going to have another one because of the 

amount of money that is being put in circulation is orders of magnitude greater than what the Greenspan Fed did. 

But no one can forecast or predict what industry it is going to 

hit, and so I am afraid I can’t help you there. But I am pretty confident that we should be worried about it. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. What you are saying, though, is that, as a result of the money supply, there will be another bubble, because you 

are putting into the system some sort of an anomaly that will cause 

something else to happen somewhere else, such as— 

Mr. DILORENZO. Yes. What happened with real estate is the low 

interest rates made it much more profitable to invest in long-term 

investments when interest rates go down. And so, all that money 

and resources is poured into real estate especially, and it ended up 

not being sustainable. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Do you have a best guess as to where it may 

happen next? 

Mr. DILORENZO. We have some criteria. Like, one of the reasons 

why I think it happened in real estate and it was such a catastrophe was all these new products, new financial products, and 

there were a lot of people who really were confused by them. 

And so, just as a general rule, in industries that are relatively 

new, where there is uncertainty on the side of the consumer, that 

is where the trouble can be. And so that might lead to a lot of possibilities. But I can’t—I don’t have any particular industry that I 

could—maybe Professor Vedder does. I don’t. 

Mr. VEDDER. I think economists who make predictions are foolish. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Are there a lot of Fed economists around? 

Mr. VEDDER. A lot of failing economists? 

24 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. No. Aren’t there a lot of economists at the 

Fed? 

Mr. VEDDER. There are a lot, and there are a lot of mistakes that 

are made. Dr. Bivens mentioned with great admiration Christina 

Romer, whose most famous quote in modern times was her quote 

early in 2009 when she said, ‘‘If the stimulus package passes, the 

unemployment rate will not go above 8 percent.’’ It is at 9 percent 

now and has been to 10 percent. 

And so, I agree with Tom that we have a ticking time bomb out 

there, and exactly what the shape of the disaster will be I don’t 

know. We have these mammoth excess reserves at banks. 

And Dr. Bivens is actually right, he is absolutely right, we 

haven’t had a huge amount of inflation now. And it is true people 

aren’t spending a lot of money now. Why aren’t they spending 

money? Is it because interest rates are too high? No. It is because 

they are scared. They are just downright scared. They are scared 

because, ‘‘Oh, we don’t know this Obamacare, what it is going to 

do to us.’’ We have had a regime change. People are scared. We are 

not used to big changes all at once. And because of that—but we 

have the potential for a disaster. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Okay. Very good. Thank you. 

Dr. Bivens, you made a comment a while ago—you were discussing Japan. And they have had many, many influxes of cash 

into their economic system, QE2, 3, 4, 5, 6, whatever. And you 

made the point that it was able, as a result of that, to sort of help 

keep inflation low and interest rates low. 

My concern is that their economy still is struggling. And it has 

been that way for 15, 20 years. If QE2 is supposed to be the endall, be-all to help us create jobs and get our economy going, how 

do you correlate those two? 

Mr. BIVENS. If you look at Japan, it pretty much had a lost decade of the 1990s, and they were sort of riven with internal debate 

about just how aggressive to get with monetary policy. And they 

never actually did, sort of, the unconventional large-scale asset 

purchases that the Fed has been doing. And— 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Yes, but didn’t they put a lot of money into 

the system, though? 

Mr. BIVENS. They kept interest rates very low, yes. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. That is my point. My point is, if we go along 

with the Fed’s mindset here and policy of throwing more money 

into the system and we look at Japan as an example, over many 

years and on many QE2s or QE1s or whatever, and it didn’t really 

do what we are hoping that this QE2 over here is going to do, what 

is the thought process that would lead one to believe that ours is 

going to be different than theirs? 

Mr. BIVENS. It won’t be different. They only saw a real recovery 

between 2002 and 2008 when they started doing the QE2s. Before 

that, they sat at zero, but they did no more. They said, we can’t 

do anything else unconventional, you just don’t do that. Everyone— 

not everyone—many people said, no, the economy needs more. 

When they finally started doing more on the monetary side, they 

actually saw a pretty decent recovery during 2002 to 2008. And 

then, of course, everybody, globally, went into the great recession. 

25 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Okay. I see my time is up. Thank you, Mr. 

Chairman. 

Chairman PAUL. Thank you. 

I want to yield 5 minutes now to Congresswoman Hayworth from 

New York. 

Dr. HAYWORTH. I yield my time at this time, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you. 

Chairman PAUL. Okay. Thank you. 

I yield 5 minutes to Congressman Huizenga from Michigan. Is he 

not here? 

Okay. I yield 5 minutes to Congressman Schweikert from Arizona. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee members, and witnesses. 

I may be one of those who is a little less interested in what is 

going on now or the last couple of years. I can grab a financial 

paper and read that. What I am trying to get my head around is 

a central bank and the monetary policy as we run it as a country 

for the last, let’s call it, 100 years. Does it exacerbate the swings 

and, therefore, in many ways, unemploy more people and make the 

troughs much deeper? 

For any of you, if someone like myself wanted to sit and read and 

get better educated, where in the literature do I find the best scholarly, fairest, and most detailed papers? Let’s start from the left. 

Mr. DILORENZO. There are several treatises on the history of 

money and banking. One of them is authored by Richard Timberlake, who has taught economics at the University of Georgia for 

many years. He is retired now. There is another one by Murray 

Rothbard, ‘‘A History of Money and Banking in the United States.’’ 

And those are both very good books. 

And since you are a very busy Member of Congress, that sounds 

like a tall order to begin with, but— 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. One of the joys of being from Arizona is that 

I have a 5-hour flight both ways. 

Mr. DILORENZO. Okay, those are two books I would pick up. 

But, also, this weekend there is a conference at Wake Forest 

University under the title, ‘‘The Fed Was a Mistake.’’ And there is 

a professor from the University of Georgia named George Selgin 

who is giving a presentation based on an academic paper. And he 

has looked at the last hundred years of the Fed’s performance, the 

very question you are asking. And I can put you in touch with Professor Selgin, if you really would like to, for your next flight back 

to Arizona. 

But he was actually at my university last week and gave this 

presentation, a PowerPoint. And he looked at all the Fed’s 

obstensible goals—price stability, unemployment—and makes the 

case that the Fed has, in general, failed, although it has not been 

a dramatic failure, but it was a failure nevertheless to stabilize 

prices and unemployment. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I appreciate it. I know I have only 5 minutes, 

so I want to, sort of, drive through this. 

Mr. VEDDER. Congressman, there is a new history of the Federal 

Reserve written by a very distinguished scholar, Allan Meltzer of 

Carnegie Mellon University. It is up through the 1980s or the 

26 

1990s. And it is not a complete history, but it is a second volume 

of a history. He is a very well-renowned monetary scholar. I 

haven’t read the book entirely, but I sat in on a conversation with 

him and Chairman Volcker a couple of weeks ago at AEI, and it 

strikes me that it would be a very instructive kind of work, as well. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. All right. 

Mr. BIVENS. Just quickly, spanning the spectrum of ideology, ‘‘A 

Monetary History of the United States,’’ Milton Friedman and 

Anna Schwartz. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay, which I actually have. 

Mr. BIVENS. ‘‘Secrets of the Temple’’ by William Greider. What 

is that? 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. No, go on. 

Mr. BIVENS. And I would say an absolute classic and very readable, ‘‘Manias, Panics, and Crashes’’ by Charles Kindleberger, formerly of MIT. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. All right. 

Mr. Chairman, witnesses, when I see monetary expansion in the 

way—let’s just take the most current case scenario. And, at the 

same time, I have been spending tremendous amounts of time 

reading about the GSEs and the overhang and the mortgages and 

all the nonperforming debt we have at so many different levels. 

Does this monetary policy end up creating a situation where we 

are not taking nonperforming assets and either writing them down 

or getting them off the books? And does this end up creating a 

huge overhang here that this monetization makes it so I can keep 

them on the books, basically sort of creating sort of a flat line? 

Mr. DILORENZO. Yes, that is exactly what has to happen, the liquidation of all of those bad assets and those bad investments. Historically, that is how recessions end. The bust period, as I said earlier, of the boom-and-bust cycles that we have is really the recovery 

period where businesses become stronger on the way out, at the 

end of the recession. 

And the Fed seems to have been doing everything it can to delay 

that process of the liquidation of these bad assets. And I think that 

is a very bad idea. 

Mr. VEDDER. I am going to defer an answer on this because—I 

think Tom is probably right, but I haven’t studied the specifics of 

the nonperforming assets closely enough to make an informed— 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. All right. 

Doctor? 

Mr. BIVENS. I don’t think it is—I think it is true that some writing down of bad assets is going to be part of a good recovery. I have 

to say, though, I think the Fed’s actions by avoiding deflation, outright falling prices, is actually going to make people climbing out 

of their debt burdens over the next 5 to 10 years easier. 

If you have a mortgage that is fixed at $150,000, and every other 

price in the economy starts plummeting around it, then all of a 

sudden your mortgage payment has just gotten a lot more onerous 

for you. And so I think, by avoiding deflation, it is actually going 

to make the debt overhang less of an impediment to recovery in the 

next 5 to 10 years. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay. 

Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have? 

27 

Chairman PAUL. I think your time has expired. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Oh. And I was just getting to the really good 

questions. 

Chairman PAUL. If you hang around, you will get another 5 minutes. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. All right. Thank you. 

Chairman PAUL. I would like to yield 5 minutes now to Congressman Renacci from Ohio. 

Mr. RENACCI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I have been a small-business owner for 28 years, and I actually 

created jobs at the age of 24 with very little money in the bank. 

But I did have the opportunity to have banks willing to lend me 

money and the opportunity to create over 1,500 jobs in my career. 

I want to ask all three gentlemen on the panel whether they believe the new duties given to the Fed in the Dodd-Frank Wall 

Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will have an effect on 

employment growth. Because I am a believer that the free-market 

system will create jobs. I am a little concerned about that. I wanted 

to hear all three of your opinions. 

Mr. DILORENZO. The Fed has a publication that has a title something like, ‘‘The Structure and Functions of the Federal Reserve.’’ 

And it lists, I think, at least 30 or 40 different areas where it regulates different types of financial markets. 

And for those of you who are businesspeople, you know that 

there is a very big cost involved in that. As Professor Vedder mentioned about the Dodd-Frank bill, it is not a free lunch. It is very 

costly to banks to enforce the provisions of that bill, and they are 

going to pass on some of the costs to their customers. 

And so, expanding the prerogatives of the Fed is going to add 

more layers of regulation and make the banking business that 

much more costly. There may be benefits along, but it is going to 

make it more costly and more costly to consumers, as well, and 

more burdensome for businesspeople like yourself, in my view. 

Mr. VEDDER. The cause of unemployment is too high a price for 

labor. When labor cost go up too much, employers hire fewer workers. It is the law of demand. It is very simple, not very complicated. 

I wrote a book about this, which a lot of people have praised to the 

skies. I thought it was the simplest concept in the world. 

Dodd-Frank, other things being equal, does not lower the cost of 

labor. If anything, it raises costs generally to employers, making it 

difficult to employ workers. So the net effect of a mechanism like 

Dodd-Frank is probably to reduce, rather than increase, employment and, thus, increase unemployment in the United States. 

Mr. BIVENS. I would say quickly, it is going to have little effect 

on what happens to unemployment. 

I will make two distinctions here. One, I have been mostly talking about, sort of, monetary ease and interest rates and I think 

that the Fed has mostly gotten it right, at least in direction. It is 

true, I do think that the Fed and every other institution in the 

2000s had too light a regulatory touch. And so I think booms and 

busts are caused by light regulatory touches. 

I think the way that Dodd-Frank empowers the Fed to actually 

provide some tighter regulation, I think that is going to be a good 

28 

thing, reduce boom-and-bust cycles in the future. And so I think it 

is an improvement. 

Mr. RENACCI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Chairman PAUL. I thank you. 

We will now go into a second round of questioning. 

I would like to address this question to Dr. Bivens. This has to 

do with the debt that we have and its relationship to monetary policy. Even the Chairman of the Fed, Chairman Bernanke, has indicated that he thinks debt and deficits are a problem and has admonished the Congress to get their budget under control. 

Do you have similar concerns? Is there a limit to how much debt 

we can have and how high these deficits should run? Or is that of 

no concern at all when we are in the midst of a recession? 

Mr. BIVENS. I absolutely have concerns over, sort of, the long-run 

debt limits that are on the United States. And I think we should 

definitely move to, sort of, long-run, closer budget balance than is 

currently forecast. 

I will say, it is not a concern of mine over the next, say, 2 years. 

To me, what the economy needs now is spending power, support 

from both the fiscal and monetary side. Some moving in the next 

couple of years to radically reduce deficits and debt would be very 

counterproductive. 

But, absolutely, in longer-run periods, as unemployment returns 

to a tolerable level, that should absolutely be a concern. 

Chairman PAUL. Thank you. 

I would like to suggest to Dr. DiLorenzo and Dr. Vedder that 

there is a connection between monetary policy and deficits. Because 

if we didn’t have the facilitator there, the ability of the Fed to buy 

debt and manipulate interest rates, wouldn’t there be a self-mechanism where Congress would literally be unable to spend the money 

because interest rates would go up? And interest rates—of course 

nobody wants them high and they are bad politics, but wouldn’t 

that be a way of holding a check on government? 

And, really, it isn’t just the Congress; it is the fact that the monetary system there accommodates the Congress because there is a 

lot of bipartisanship in the Congress. Sometimes, there are big-government conservatives who like to spend money, and sometimes, 

there are big-government liberals who like to spend money, and 

there is too much bipartisanship. They get together and they spend 

this money. And they figure, if we can get away with it, we are just 

going to allow the Fed to monetize this. 

And, for a long time, they can get away with it. And they have 

done this, especially since 1971, until they finally got this huge 

bubble that finally burst, and we are in the midst of this great recession. For those who are employed, it is a depression. 

But do you agree with that connection, that the Fed has something to do with encouraging the Fed to act irresponsibly? 

Mr. DILORENZO. I would. I think you hit the nail on the head. 

I would agree completely with that. 

And, of course, when the Fed gets involved, it reduces the perceived cost of government. If you raise taxes to pay for government 

services, it is much more explicit and hits you in the face; you get 

a bill. But when the Fed prints money and expands the money supply, it has what economists call a ‘‘fiscal illusion effect.’’ And it 

29 

makes it that much easier for this bipartisanship to occur that you 

referred to. 

Chairman PAUL. Dr. Vedder? 

Mr. VEDDER. I agree with Dr. DiLorenzo and with your analysis, 

Dr. Paul. And, indeed, in my statement, I was worried I was talking a little bit too much about fiscal policy and debt, but I was 

doing it for exactly the reasons you indicated. I think there is a 

real connection. 

And throughout the history of the Fed, even going back before 

1951, when the Fed was tied into the Treasury to keep interest 

rates down during the war, the Fed just keeping buying bonds and 

so forth. It was a deliberate policy to help the government manage 

its fiscal affairs. The Fed accommodated it by monetizing a lot of 

the debt. 

This has been going on and on and on. And it will go on as long 

as Congressmen have to be re-elected every 2 years and as long as 

the Fed has some connection to the Federal Government. It is inevitable that it will go on. 

Chairman PAUL. Thank you. 

This is a question for Dr. Bivens. This has to do with a reference 

to what Dr. Vedder said earlier. He said that part of the reason we 

go into recessions is because labor costs get too high. Of course, nobody likes to hear that. 

But if this is true—and I believe Keynes spoke to this at one 

time, because labor costs get too high, but you can’t go and, say, 

cut your labor. You can’t cut nominal costs. But he argued that real 

costs could go down by inflation. And you raise it and you lower 

the value of the dollar, so real cost goes down. And that helps you 

get out of the recession. 

Do you buy into that argument? Or how would you look at that, 

on the need to get labor costs down? 

Mr. BIVENS. I actually don’t buy into that argument. 

The way I read Keynes is, sort of, as follows: that the first shot 

fired against his idea, that the way to fight recessions is to try to 

have the Fed and to have fiscal policymakers add more support to 

the economy, the first shot was, no, no, you just need to get the 

price of labor down. And he said basically, one, it is hard to get the 

price of labor down, even if all workers in the economy said, ‘‘Yes, 

we all agree to a 10 percent wage cut today, cut our wages,’’ all 

that would do is lead to a 10 percent fall in prices, as well. So the 

real wage actually would not fall much. It is actually very hard— 

Chairman PAUL. Wouldn’t that be good? Wouldn’t that be good, 

to see prices come down? 

Mr. BIVENS. No, because— 

Chairman PAUL. It would help the consumer. 

Mr. BIVENS. I am sorry? 

Chairman PAUL. It would help the consumer, with prices going— 

what is so bad about prices going down? 

Mr. BIVENS. Because their wages went down the exact same 

amount, and so their purchasing power has not changed at all. 

Chairman PAUL. Yes, but— 

Mr. BIVENS. What you would do is you would make the value of 

their debt more onerous. Basically, by increasing the value of debt, 

again, you have a $150,000 fixed mortgage and all of a sudden your 

30 

wage is 10 percent lower, all of a sudden you are more constrained 

by your nominal debt payments. And that will make the economy 

worse. 

And so, Keynes is pretty clear, wage-cutting is absolutely not the 

way to get out of a recession. 

Chairman PAUL. Okay. 

I now will yield 5 minutes to Congressman Clay. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Dr. Bivens, we were told by Dr. Vedder that private markets handled mortgages and other lending for generations successfully without Federal intervention. Again, the data shows otherwise. 

According to the Congressional Research Service, during the 

years 1920 through 1945, the last period of time when the Federal 

Government had a very small role in homeownership, rates were 

only between 40 and 50 percent of homeownership nationally. Now 

that rate, at a time when the Federal Government is supposedly 

inappropriately involved, is 67 percent. The homeownership rate 

was even higher within the last few years, as high as 69 percent. 

So I don’t see how the numbers back up these claims about supposed excessive, expansionary policies on home lending. Can you 

help explain this error? 

Mr. BIVENS. I think my assessment, sort of, agrees with yours, 

that I think the government support of homeownership played a 

key role in having that increase a lot in the post-war era. I am willing to quibble a bit that maybe some of the homeownership rates 

we saw in 2006, 2007 were bubble-inflated. But the trend is clear 

as day: With the introduction of Fannie and Freddie, with government support for homeownership, those rates rose pretty quickly. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for that response. 

Do you think there is value in having the Fed maintain a dual 

mandate for monetary policy? 

Mr. BIVENS. I do, and especially if the alternative is to drop the 

full employment mandate. I think that would be a disaster. 

To my mind, if there is a criticism of the Fed over a longer run, 

the last 30 years, it is that they have actually allowed that part 

of their dual mandate, the full employment part of it, to sort of go 

by the wayside and focused excessively on the price stability part. 

And so, a Fed that actually took that dual mandate seriously, I 

think, would be a very good thing. 

Mr. CLAY. Do you think that if the Fed were operating with a 

single price stability mandate, that its execution of monetary policy 

since the onset of the financial crisis of September of 2008 would 

have been materially different or would have led to significantly 

different outcomes in the economy? 

Mr. BIVENS. It is a good question. I think where that single mandate of price stability would really be a bad thing is during expansions. 

The irony here is that most people think the Fed have something 

like a 1 to 2 percent inflation target, seems to be—they are pretty 

consistently missing that, on the low side, these days. Inflation 

rates are coming in well below 1 percent. 

So even if they only had a commitment to 11⁄2 percent inflation— 

forget the employment side—if that was their only commitment, 

31 

they should still loosen. And so that is how bad the economy is 

today. Even if all they had was a pretty conservative price target, 

they should still be providing all the support they are and maybe 

even a little more. 

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for that response. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairman PAUL. Thank you. 

I now yield 5 minutes to Mr. Huizenga from Michigan. 

Mr. HUIZENGA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. 

And my colleague from Missouri just, actually, started going 

down a road that I wanted to explore a little bit. 

Dr. Vedder, from the historical perspective, I think it would be 

helpful to have a very brief explanation about the dual mandate. 

How long has it been in place? Why was it really implemented? 

And then, moving on to all three of you, is the dual mandate a 

proper mandate? I think Dr. Bivens was starting to talk a little bit 

about that, but I would like to hear the remainder of the panel’s 

views on that. 

Mr. VEDDER. The dual mandate—when I think of the history of 

this, I think first of the Employment Act of 1946, where the government committed itself to a policy of encouraging full employment. And even in that bill, price stability was mentioned, and it 

was part of the so-called mandate. Again, it was more a statement 

of intent rather than a prescriptive statement. 

The Humphrey-Hawkins bill, which I think was, what, 1977 or 

something like that, was a more explicit widening of that mandate 

and made much more explicit. 

And all of this precedes, sort of—there was almost implicit in 

some of this, a lot of this, as relates to what we might call the 

‘‘Phillips curve’’ idea, that if you have price stability—can you have 

price stability and full employment? That is the empirical issue. 

We can have that discussion. I do not think that the manipulation of prices in the long run impacts on employment, period. I 

think it does in the short run. I have written a book which indicates it does. There is a Phillips curve in the short run sometimes, 

but in the long run—higher inflation, lower unemployment. But in 

the long run, I don’t see that that relationship exists. 

Mr. DILORENZO. In terms of the price stability, we have price indexes that go all the way back to the 1790s or even a few years 

before that. And the price level in 1913, when the Fed was created, 

was roughly the same as it was in 1790, with some ups and downs. 

But ever since the Fed was created, the price level is 22 times 

higher now. So when I hear the idea that the Fed has a mandate 

to stabilize prices, it is almost farcical. 

And I don’t think, overall, it has done a very good job in stabilizing employment either. You can mandate that is the Fed’s job, 

but I think, historically, it hasn’t done a very good job in either 

one. 

Mr. BIVENS. Yes, in regards to that, I will say that I would much 

rather have average economic growth and the frequency of duration of recessions we have had post-1914 than in the 150 years 

prior. Basically, some moderate rate of inflation is the price you 

pay for having economic growth and fighting recessions in a serious 

way. 

32 

Again, to the degree that there has been a problem with the dual 

mandate over the past 25, 30 years, it has been that one-half of it, 

the full employment commitment, has really been sort of the neglected part. 

Mr. HUIZENGA. So if I am hearing you, Dr. Bivens, you want to 

see the dual mandate remain, correct? 

Mr. BIVENS. Yes. 

Mr. HUIZENGA. Okay. 

And I guess, the other two panelists, do you believe it is appropriate for that language to remain in there as goals and objectives? 

Dr. Vedder and Dr. DiLorenzo? 

Mr. VEDDER. I think we ought to repeal the Humphrey-Hawkins 

Act, period, just do away with it. 

Mr. DILORENZO. I agree with that. We have mentioned Christina 

Romer several times. One of her academic articles revises some 

data and shows that the business cycle was actually not more unstable in the pre-Fed era in the 19th Century than it was after the 

pre-Fed era. So you can’t even make the case anymore, according 

to Christina Romer’s research, that the Fed has done anything to 

stabilize the business cycle compared to the bad system we had, 

the admittedly bad, flawed system we had before the Fed came into 

being. 

Mr. HUIZENGA. Dr. Bivens, do you care to address HumphreyHawkins at all or any of the other points? 

Mr. BIVENS. First, it was my understanding that HumphreyHawkins was actually no longer in effect. Am I wrong on that? Did 

it lapse in 2005 or 2006? 

Mr. HUIZENGA. I wasn’t here. 

Mr. BIVENS. Okay. Sorry. So I am not, you know—I think the 

dual mandate should absolutely be part of what the Fed is tasked 

to do. 

Mr. HUIZENGA. Okay. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back my time. 

Chairman PAUL. Thank you. 

I now yield 5 minutes to Congresswoman Maloney from New 

York, who has joined us. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, for this 

hearing. 

And I thank all the panelists for their thoughtful testimony that 

they delivered to our offices. 

I would like to ask Dr. Vedder to comment on some of the facts 

that were raised in Dr. Bivens’s testimony. In his testimony, he 

cited a study estimating that the $600 billion in Treasury asset 

purchases is likely to boost GDP by up to a full percentage point, 

which translates into roughly 1 million full-time jobs. 

That same study also stated that the full effect of all large-scale 

asset purchases undertaken by the Federal Reserve probably supported nearly 3 million jobs and will have lowered measured unemployment by 1.5 percentage points through the end of 2012. Other 

economists and researchers have supported this with similar studies and results. 

And so my question to Dr. Vedder is, isn’t this solid research, 

solid evidence that sound monetary policy does help create jobs? 

33 

Mr. VEDDER. I haven’t read the studies, to be honest, Congresswoman. 

But I will say this: Since the recession began in late 2007, the 

Fed has followed the most expansionary monetary policy in, I 

think, its history in a situation like this. It has created a trillion 

dollars in excess reserves. It has done a whole variety of efforts and 

exertions to bail out companies and so forth in distress. And yet, 

we have fewer people working today than we did when this effort 

began. We have the worst employment record of any major downturn since the Great Depression. 

And so I can’t see any positive association between Federal Reserve monetary policy and job creation based on the reading of the 

evidence in a period when we have a 9 percent unemployment rate 

and we have, what, 15 million—‘‘X’’ number of people out of work. 

It is kind of hard to get warm and fuzzy about the Fed’s success 

rate with its monetary policy in recent times. 

Mrs. MALONEY. May I ask unanimous consent to place this study 

in the record? 

Chairman PAUL. Without objection, it is so ordered. 

Mrs. MALONEY. And also to state that Christina Romer and others, other economists, including major economists, have testified 

that the economic shocks that our country has suffered are 3 times 

worse than the Great Depression. As the daughter of parents who 

suffered through the Great Depression, no matter how horrible this 

recession is or has been, it is nothing like what our country went 

through in the Great Depression. 

So I would like to ask Dr. Bivens, Dr. Vedder mentioned that he 

believes that there should be constitutional constraints placed on 

the Federal Reserve’s authority. Can you comment on that? And do 

you agree? 

Mr. BIVENS. First, I would just like to reiterate your point. It is 

bad out there in the U.S. economy; the great recession is really 

bad. The shock to the private sector that happened with the burst 

in the housing bubble is absolutely enormous. Like you say, researchers in many places say it was bigger than what led to, actually, the Great Depression. And I think it was the aggressive response of policymakers across-the-board that kept it from being so. 

In terms of constitutional limits on the Fed, I would like a lot 

more detail. If those limits would impede them from fighting future 

recessions as aggressively as they fought this one, I think that 

would be a very bad thing. 

I think it is one thing to say this has been the most aggressive 

response ever and we still have 9 percent unemployment. It is kind 

of like, imagine a town that is building a levee wall in response to 

a flood. You can say, ‘‘It is the biggest levee we ever built, but the 

water keeps coming over it. We should stop. It is bigger than we 

have ever built.’’ You have to build a wall as big as the shock. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Okay. Thank you. 

Last week, Chairman Bernanke gave a speech at the National 

Press Club. I ask unanimous consent to place that speech in the 

record. 

Chairman PAUL. Without objection, it is so ordered. 

Mrs. MALONEY. And he stated that, although economic growth 

will probably increase this year, unemployment is expected to reVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:06 Mar 29, 2011 Jkt 064552 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 K:\DOCS\64552.TXT TERRIE
34 

main above and inflation below the levels that policymakers have 

judged to foster maximum employment and price stability. 

Since the Fed’s rate has been near zero since December 2008, the 

Fed has been using alternative tools to provide additional monetary 

accommodation. Specifically, the Fed has been purchasing longerterm securities on the open market, or in common speech it has 

been called quantitative easing. And the goal of this has been to 

put downward pressure directly on longer-term interest rates. 

Chairman Bernanke—and I want to ask the panelists if they 

could respond to whether or not they agree with his statement. He 

stated that, ‘‘A wide range of market indicators supports the view 

that the Federal Reserve’s securities purchases have been effective 

at easing financial conditions.’’ 

I would like the panel to comment on whether they agree or disagree. I think it is an important question. 

Mr. DILORENZO. They have to have had an effect in some industries, of course, because wherever the money goes to first. But, obviously, it has had very little effect on overall unemployment, since 

the unemployment rate remains stuck around 9 percent or more, 

depending on how it is measured. 

So, yes, it has had some effect on some industries. That is why 

the stock market is up, some of the big corporations have done 

well. But unemployment is not being very successful. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Could you also comment on what would have 

happened if we had not engaged in quantitative easing with the 

Fed’s fund rate close to zero? What would have happened? 

Mr. DILORENZO. Since you are, sort of, looking at me, it is not 

a coincidence, I don’t think, that we have had somewhat of an explosion in government at all levels—the Fed printing money, government spending, government debt, and we are stuck at 9 percent 

unemployment or more. Because all of this diverts resources in the 

direction of government-directed spending in resource allocation 

away from the entrepreneurs and the business owners and the consumers, who know a lot better what to do with that money than 

government bureaucrats and politicians do. 

And so I think we would be much worse off—as we said earlier 

before you came, Congresswoman, that we may be sowing the seeds 

of another bubble with all this quantitative easing. 

Mrs. MALONEY. Dr. Bivens, would you comment briefly? 

Mr. BIVENS. Yes, very briefly. If we had not done the quantitative easing, long-term interest rates would be higher, and we 

would have less business investment and consumer spending. 

And I would just note, business investment has performed very 

well for the past 5 or 6 quarters, growing at about 15 percent at 

an annualized rate. So we would have less of that if we had not 

done the quantitative easing. 

Mrs. MALONEY. My time has expired. 

Chairman PAUL. Thank you. 

I now yield 5 minutes to Congressman Jones from North Carolina. 

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, thank you again. 

And I again want to start with an e-mail from my district and 

then get to a question. 

35 

This is Mr. Gordon Hansen from New Bern, North Carolina: 

‘‘Thank you for requesting my opinion with regard to the Federal 

Reserve. My initial reaction to the Fed’s policy to printing more 

money is, how is the Fed going to stop inflation? Since the beginning of this century, standard of living has decreased because fuel 

increased so rapidly, the middle-class wages could not keep up, and 

no one seems to notice or care.’’ 

This is America talking, quite frankly. And we have been elected 

by the people from all over this country to represent their feelings 

and their needs in Washington, D.C. 

I have great respect for each and every one of you. You are very 

learned men, much more than I. 

The frustration that I see back in my district and I feel is that, 

when I was born in 1943—and thank you for recognizing my birthday tomorrow—when I was born in 1943, this country was in war 

and coming out of war. This country impressed the world with its 

greatness after the war, of how we were in a position where we 

were creating things, we were manufacturing things. 

And that gets me to the point that I am one of the few Republicans—I am opposed to any trade agreement at this time. I am not 

adamantly opposed to trade agreements, but when you are in a 

deep recession, which everybody has acknowledged, why are we 

passing the Korean trade agreement so we can create 70,000 jobs, 

I believe has been said. I am trying to verify that, by the way. I 

don’t believe it. 

But the point is, this country is a debtor nation. Now, we can 

pump it up, from the Feds to everybody else can put money out 

here. But, as everybody is saying, the people understand what is 

happening. They fully understand what is happening. 

So my point is this. My State of North Carolina, from 1999 until 

2009, lost 376,000 manufacturing jobs. What would have happened, 

in your opinion—I have a two-part question—what would have 

happened, in your opinion, if we had not passed NAFTA, CAFTA, 

and all of these trade agreements that supposedly were going to 

create more jobs for the American people? 

I think greed is probably the most dangerous thing affecting 

America. Greed will destroy an individual, it will destroy a family, 

it will destroy a country. And my humble opinion is that greed has 

put America in this position, not only because of trade agreements. 

But, in your learned minds, give me an example of nations that 

at one time were economically strong and yet, because of some decision such as free trade, that these nations—and maybe it is not exactly the same comparison—but these nations, in my opinion—at 

one time, Spain ruled the world. At one time, France ruled the 

world. At one time, Rome ruled the world. At one time, America 

was the dominant power. Now it is China. And we are slaves to 

China. We owe them over $900 billion. 

From an economic standpoint, where do you see America? Are we 

at a point that America needs to understand that we cannot come 

back to be a strong power in the world? Are we at a point where, 

yes, we will have somewhat of a quality of lifestyle, but it is never 

going to go back, it is not even going to come close to going back 

to what it was? 

36 

I don’t think you can continue to sell yourself out to other nations and expect to be strong economically or militarily. 

Any response? 

Mr. DILORENZO. Sir, the countries you mentioned, the Spanish 

empire and so forth, they essentially bankrupted themselves with 

empire. And, in my view, we are a long way down that road with 

our military empire all around the world, too. And so I think that 

is a contributing factor. 

And the only other thing I will say is, I am a free-market economist, but I opposed NAFTA at the time because when I first saw 

it, it was, like, a thousand pages of government regulations. And 

I didn’t think it really constituted free trade at all, but government-managed trade. And I guess you would you have to do a careful study of how it has been managed over the past 15 years or so 

to really know its effects. But I wouldn’t blame the problems on 

free trade, because I don’t think NAFTA was a free-trade agreement, despite the words ‘‘free trade.’’ 

Mr. JONES. Thank you. 

Mr. VEDDER. I more or less agree with Professor DiLorenzo. I do 

believe in free trade as a concept. I think most economists do. This 

is one thing economists of all persuasions more or less agree with, 

but we do put a lot of provisions in these bills that get far afield 

from the issue of trade. And I think that is a source of concern. 

As an economic historian, I would have to note that nations have 

rises and falls in the way people work and what they do. We had 

a rise in manufacturing in the 19th and early 20th centuries because of what us economists say, we had a comparative advantage 

in manufacturing. We have lost some of that comparative advantage today. Some of it has to do with government policies. Some of 

it has to do with other things that have nothing do with what the 

U.S. Government does. 

I don’t personally worry too much about the loss of manufacturing jobs per se. What I worry about is the loss of jobs in totality, 

the productivity of labor in its totality, and so forth. And that is, 

I think, a broader concern. 

Mr. BIVENS. You asked a very big question, so let me just try to 

be very brief. 

I think it is absolutely true that if we want different results, if 

we want living standards to continue to grow at a reasonable rate 

in the United States for the broad workforce, we better start doing 

lots of things differently. And one of those things we should do differently is our international economic policy. 

I am a little shocked to agree; I also did not like NAFTA. I think 

we need to think about exchange rates very differently. And so we 

better start doing things differently if we want to continue to grow. 

Mr. JONES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman PAUL. Thank you. 

I will yield 5 minutes now to Mr. Green from Texas. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Let’s talk for just a moment about causal connections as opposed 

to coincidence. Last summer, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was at its zenith, when it was providing maximum 

benefit, we also at that time saw the turnaround in terms of a recovery in the economy. 

37 

Mr. Bivens, was that just coincidence or is there a causal connection? 

Mr. BIVENS. I definitely believe there is a causal connection. Like 

you say, the Recovery Act was providing a sort of maximal boost 

to the U.S. economy at that point. There are a lot of estimates that 

said, without the support provided by the Recovery Act, we would 

have seen zero growth for about 3 or 4 quarters even after the official recession ended. 

Mr. GREEN. Let’s move now to the FDIC. 

Mr. DiLorenzo, do you, sir, believe that the FDIC serves a meaningful purpose with its ability to wind down banks that are failing? 

Mr. DILORENZO. With its ability to close down banks? 

Mr. GREEN. That are failing. When they are failing, the FDIC 

moves in, usually on a Friday, they wind down the bank, and then 

on Monday there is a new bank that opens, perhaps under the 

same name, or a new name, but they do reopen, and they move the 

assets. And they have the ability to do this with a premium that 

is paid by banks so as not to interrupt the economy. 

Do you agree with this? 

Mr. DILORENZO. I don’t think we need a government institution 

to do that. That could be handled by the courts, I would think. But 

it is probably one of the least offensive things the FDIC— 

Mr. GREEN. You would not have the FDIC, you would have the 

courts deal with the banks and the runs that would be created on 

banks? You would have multiple banks, as was the case when we 

were starting the great recession, that were challenged, and you 

would just simply let all of these banks go into bankruptcy? Do you 

not see that by doing this we would have runs, greater runs on 

banks that would create greater stress on the economy? 

Mr. DILORENZO. I am not sure—before we had an FDIC, I am 

not sure you could make the case that the bank runs were worse 

throughout history. 

Mr. GREEN. They were. Before we had the FDIC, we had the 

Great Depression. 

Mr. DILORENZO. Yes, for a few short periods. But if you look at 

the long stretch of history, I don’t think—you would have a much 

tougher time making that case. 

Mr. GREEN. I would say to you that a few short periods that devastate the economy to the extent that the Great Depression did is 

something that would not go unnoticed. 

Mr. Bivens, do you think the FDIC serves a meaningful purpose? 

Mr. BIVENS. Absolutely, for the reasons you say. They make people secure in their deposits, and so you don’t see the runs. 

Mr. GREEN. Mr. Vedder, do you think the FDIC serves a meaningful purpose? 

Mr. VEDDER. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the FDIC. I 

think, generally, it has been one of the more successful government 

agencies. I do think it needs, however— 

Mr. GREEN. Excuse me, since my time is limited. Thank you. Let 

me just follow up with this. 

Mr. VEDDER. It needs— 

Mr. GREEN. You will get an opportunity. 

Let me follow up with this. Given that you think it serves a 

meaningful purpose—and I agree with you—let us then conclude 

38 

something else. Do you think that we should be able to wind down 

these AIGs of the world when they can provide systemic risk to the 

economy? Or should they just be allowed to bring the economy 

down? 

The AIGs of the world—you are familiar with AIG? 

Mr. VEDDER. What do you mean by ‘‘wind them down?’’ Why 

don’t we let them go into bankruptcy? What is wrong with bankruptcy? 

Mr. GREEN. Why not let the banks go into bankruptcy? That is 

the point. You just said that the FDIC protects banks. If you are 

going to prevent banks from going into bankruptcy, why not try to 

salvage the economy and prevent the types of stress that can be 

caused by having these institutions that create systemic risk, by 

preventing them from just simply going into bankruptcy and creating all of these problems for us? 

The point I am making is, Dodd-Frank deals with that. If you 

don’t like Dodd-Frank, then you don’t like a means by which we 

deal with ‘‘too-big-to-fail’’ institutions. Most people think that we 

need to do something about these institutions that were labeled 

‘‘too-big-to-fail.’’ Dodd-Frank addresses this. Dodd-Frank addresses 

other aspects. 

You mentioned credit cards. Do you think there ought to be 

something called universal default? A lot of consumers are sitting 

in here. Are you familiar with that term, ‘‘universal default?’’ 

Mr. VEDDER. I am familiar with the term, yes. 

Mr. GREEN. Are you familiar with it? Do you think we ought to 

have universal default? 

Mr. VEDDER. I haven’t—I don’t have a position on that. 

Mr. GREEN. I do. I don’t think consumers ought to be in a position such that, because they have problems in one place, credit card 

companies can simply decide, we are going to declare you in default 

with us because you had a problem someplace else, especially in 

this economy. Dodd-Frank deals with this. 

Mr. VEDDER. Does it deal with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac? 

Mr. GREEN. Now, let me ask you one more. I have one more for 

you. I believe you are a gold standard person. Is that a fair statement, based upon your comments and your writings? 

Mr. VEDDER. I think the gold standard—we did well when we 

were on the gold standard. 

Mr. GREEN. And if we return to it, if we return to the gold standard, what would happen? 

Mr. VEDDER. Pardon? 

Mr. GREEN. What would happen if we returned to the gold standard? 

Mr. VEDDER. It would be very—the return to the gold standard 

is not—if we did it and if the world did it, I think we would be a 

better place. I think we would be a better place. But I don’t see it 

happening in the short term. 

Mr. GREEN. Let’s assume that you have made a prediction that 

we would be in a better place. Is that a fair statement? 

Mr. VEDDER. Yes. 

Mr. GREEN. Now, what did you say about people who make predictions earlier? 

Mr. VEDDER. Economists are lousy predictors. 

39 

Mr. GREEN. What did you say about the people who make predictions? 

Mr. VEDDER. So why are you sitting here listening to me, Congressman? 

Mr. GREEN. I am listening to you because you are here as a person who merits some attention, given that you are before Congress. 

Now, tell me, what did you say about people who make predictions? 

Mr. VEDDER. What did I say? 

Mr. GREEN. Yes, sir. You don’t recall? 

Mr. VEDDER. I said that some people, some economists make bad 

predictions, and some of them make good predictions. 

Mr. GREEN. You had an ‘‘F’’ word that you used. 

Mr. VEDDER. I did? 

Mr. GREEN. Yes. 

Mr. VEDDER. I don’t remember. 

Mr. GREEN. I do. You said they were foolish. 

Mr. VEDDER. Foolish? 

Mr. GREEN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. VEDDER. Oh, okay. 

Mr. GREEN. All right. Thank you for your prediction. 

Mr. VEDDER. Okay. 

Mr. GREEN. I yield back. 

Chairman PAUL. I yield myself 5 minutes for closing remarks 

and anybody else who wants to have another question. 

I do want to bring up the subject generally of QE2. There is a 

strong disagreement between those who object to it and Dr. Bivens, 

who thought that it really has helped a whole lot. And I don’t think 

we will resolve that. 

But, that was part of the program of injecting $4 trillion into the 

economy, with the argument that it has done very, very little at all 

and, some of us believe, maybe harm in the long run. But the $4 

trillion, actually we can argue that it did help prevent a depression 

for some people, mainly Wall Street and the big bankers and some 

corporations. They were able to benefit. And who came out on the 

short end? The people who lost their jobs and lost their houses and 

lost their mortgages. So the whole thing didn’t work if you were 

trying to help the poor people. I think you were destroying the poor 

people while it was nothing more than corporate welfare—$4 trillion, and we have very little to show for it. 

But the question I want to address is, there is a little bit of 

talk—I don’t think it is serious—about unwinding this. We bought 

up all the trash, all the worthless assets. And the taxpayers own 

this now, and it is on the books. We can’t fully audit the Fed. We 

can’t find out what they are doing. And now they are talking about, 

maybe we ought to unwind this. That is, we are going to sell that 

trash. Who is going to buy it? How do we do it? And when do we 

do it? 

Chairman Bernanke says it is not time yet, but he is really cocky 

about this. He knows when it is, and he is going to do it, and he 

is going to do it smoothly. And what did he say about problems 

coming? His anticipation, his whole idea that when a crisis comes 

and when there is a recession, I can take care of it, I know how 

to inject money in just unlimited amounts. And I tell you what, he 

40 

did, unlimited amounts, the largest ever. And the jury may be still 

out on how bad a failure it is going to be, but the time will come. 

But the question is, what are we going to do about unwinding? 

Are they really serious? And what would that do to employment? 

If they did it now—they are not going to dare do it now, with unemployment rates, real unemployment rates up to 22 percent, because it would do that horrible thing of raising interest rates. So 

that is not going to happen. 

What they are going to do is continue to look at the CPI. That 

is where Bernanke is going to get his signal. When the CPI goes 

up and we have price inflation, that is when we have to unwind. 

And he is so overconfident about this. You talk about predictions 

and braggadocio, ‘‘I can take care of it.’’ Like, he didn’t know it was 

coming, he would take care of it if it came, and now he says, ‘‘I 

know exactly when to turn it off.’’ I just think that is such dangerous talk. 

By looking at the CPI, what does he do? He takes the CPI, he 

excludes food and energy, and says, gee, CPI isn’t going up, and he 

has price stability. There is no more price stability in this country 

when you look at what happens to the bond prices and the housing 

prices and commodity prices. There is nothing. What is this stuff 

about unwinding? 

I would like a comment from each one of you on what is going 

to happen, or if it happens, and what are the abilities of truly 

unwinding this and really saving us from a calamity? 

First, Dr. DiLorenzo. 

Mr. DILORENZO. Congressman, what you just said reminds me of 

what Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize for in 1974. It is summarized in a book of his called, ‘‘The Fatal Conceit.’’ And it is essentially a critique of this whole idea that one man or one group 

or one committee could, sort of, essentially plan an economy, 

whether it is by manipulating interest rates or the price level or 

whatever else. And I see no reason why we Americans are better 

at central planning today than the Russians were in the 20th Century. 

That is basically the mindset that you are talking about when 

you are talking about Chairman Bernanke claiming to be able to 

manipulate the economy in these ways. I don’t see any way out. If 

he had a smooth exit strategy, I assume he would be taking it right 

now. And so I see nothing but bad things that could possibly happen from winding down, as you say. 

Chairman PAUL. Dr. Vedder? 

Mr. VEDDER. To me, the supreme irony of all of what you just 

said and what Professor DiLorenzo said is, why was the Fed created in the first place? I think if you read the history of the period, 

after the panic of 1907—the panic of 1907, there was no central 

bank. And so, what happened were a bunch of private bankers, led 

by J.P. Morgan, sort of organized an ad hoc committee to sort of 

save banks and prevent them from failing. And by the way, it 

achieved some success in doing that. 

But afterwards, people said we can’t have a single individual 

serve as sort of the guru to save our economy, like J.P. Morgan. 

We have to create a central bank and decentralize it into 12 banks 

and all, to keep the power diffuse. 

41 

And we moved away from that diffusion of power back to the centralization of power. Now it is Bernanke. At least J.P. Morgan had 

some skin in the game. He had some money in the game. When the 

banks failed, he failed. What does Bernanke have in the game? He 

gets his salary anyway and then goes off to work for Goldman 

Sachs. 

So I think that is it. And I have no idea how it is going to be 

unwound. Because it is an historically unprecedented situation, I 

can’t predict. But I am uneasy. And that is why markets are uneasy. And that is why prices—that is why we have the problems 

we have. That is why bond prices are starting to go up. That is 

why Moody’s is starting to say, should we give AAA bond rating to 

the U.S. Government securities? Things like that. People are getting uneasy. 

Chairman PAUL. Maybe Dr. Bivens will be more optimistic. 

Mr. BIVENS. Slightly, yes. It is not a trivial challenge about how 

this is all going to be unwound. But I will say just two things 

quickly. 

One, it is going to actually feel like a luxurious decision if we can 

start unwinding this and the unemployment rate is much lower. 

And so, to my mind, the proper focus now is on providing maximal 

support to job growth in the economy, not worrying so much about 

how this is unwound. 

And two, I have to say, I am sure there will be mistakes made 

as we do it. I am sure there will be some targets missed. But he 

has actually—Ben Bernanke and the rest of the Fed has laid out 

a strategy for how this will be unwound. They have talked about 

the instruments they are going to use, the levers. Is it going to 

work perfectly? Are they going to hit forecasts to the decimal point? 

Absolutely not. But, to my mind, the fact that they are focused 

much more on support and job growth in the near term says very 

good things about what they are doing. 

Chairman PAUL. Thank you. 

Mr. Clay, I yield to you for another 5 minutes. Or Mr. Green. 

Mr. CLAY. Mr. Chairman, I will yield to Mr. Green. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank the ranking 

member, as well. 

I would close by reminding us that we have seen, I am sure 

many of you, the movie, ‘‘Back to the Future.’’ Based upon what I 

have heard today, there are some who would take us ‘‘forward to 

the past’’—back to the past, or forward to the past, when we didn’t 

have a Fed, when we didn’t have FDIC, when we did not have VA, 

when we did not have many of the institutions that have helped 

people move into the middle class. Home ownership, 30-year mortgages—these things have made a difference in the lives of the 

American people. 

And I would caution us, before we make decisions to eliminate 

institutions that have served us well, perhaps we should consider 

the unintended consequences of such a massive decision. And I 

think we ought to proceed with a great degree of caution when we 

say things like, we can live without the Fed, without the FDIC. I 

am indicating VA; no one said it. But when you are on this track, 

it appears to me that you may be talking about the VA, as well. 

42 

Many of these institutions have served a good many middle-class 

people well, and we ought to move with caution. 

I thank you for the time, and I yield back. 

Chairman PAUL. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

(43) 

A P P E N D I X 

February 9, 2011 

44 


64552.0005
45 


64552.0006
46 


64552.0007
47 


64552.0001
48 


64552.0002
49 


64552.0003
50 


64552.0004
51 


64552.0008
52 


64552.0009
53 


64552.0010
54 


64552.0011
55 


64552.0012
56 


64552.0013
57 


64552.0014
58 


64552.0015
59 


64552.0016
60 


64552.0017
61 


64552.0018
62 


64552.0019
63 


64552.0020
64 


64552.0021
65 


64552.0022
66 


64552.0023
67 


64552.0024
68 


64552.0025
69 


64552.0026
70 


64552.0027
71 


64552.0028
72 


64552.0029
73 


64552.0030
74 


64552.0031
75 


64552.0032
76 


64552.0033
77 


64552.0034
78 


64552.0035
79 


64552.0036
80 


64552.0037