Singing the blues

If you are an economist working as a financial advisor in Nashville and you spot a worrying trend in the economy what do you do? You sing about and the local PBS television station loves you. Jon Shayne, CEO of Nashville-based Shayne & Company, a boutique investment company, began to suspect something was amiss in 2007, a year before the fiscal meltdown. That insight eventually produced his alter ego, Merle Hazard (Merle Haggard; moral hazard). Yes, he is as corny as Hee Haw but his economic opinions are spot on. In this video Ronald Reagan's top economist and creator of the famous Laffer Curve, Arthur Laffer makes a cameo appearance. In another video he has a brief conversation the Stanford's John Taylor, author of the Taylor Rule, an arcane monetary principle relative to the rate of interest. Robert Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University sees fit to post his videos on his blog. To sum it up, Merle Hazard is no lightweight.
The Federal Reserve's policy of nominal or zero interest rates is in my mind a high wire act. It has never been tried before and the consequences may not surface until it is unwound. "How Long Will Interest Rates Stay Low?" deals with that policy.


If your tastes run to Gospel Music you may want to view "Give Me Old Time Recession" which hearkens back to the days of more modest Fed policy with predicable outcomes/