The most dangerous idea in Federal Reserve history

Paper de Romer y Romer

"The most dangerous idea, they say, is excessive pessimism about monetary policy. If you look back at the two key eras where we say monetary policy went awry—during the deflation of the 1930s and the inflation of the 1970s—the interesting thing that Romer and Romer find is that if you dig into the archives of the Federal Reserve minutes there weren't really "mistakes" as you might think of it. Policymakers in the '30s knew there was a deflationary slump, and they knew it was bad, just as policymakers in the '70s knew there was an inflationary spiral, and they knew it was bad. But in the '30s, policymakers persuaded themselves that with interest rates already low there was nothing more they could do, while policymakers in the '70s persuaded themselves that inflation represented a purely structural phenomenon that they couldn't cure."