Friday, September 28, 2012

Why the Minneapolis Fed Head Changed His Mind and Backed QE3

As Brad DeLong said in his link to FT Alphaville's* post:
The Kocherlakota Shift at the Fed Is a Big Deal...
From Real Time Economics:

Another Reason Kocherlakota Changed His Mind
 In articles today and last week, the Journal documented the remarkable transformation of Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota from a policy hawk against the central bank’s easy-money policies, to policy dove, who is strongly supportive. As today’s article explained, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke played a role in Mr. Kocherlakota’s changing views.

There’s another economist who played a role in shaping Mr. Kocherlakota’s views, and you probably haven’t heard of this one. He is a 38-year-old Argentine professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named Ivan Werning.

Mr. Kocherlakota cited a paper by Mr. Werning in his speech last week in which he called for strong new commitments by the Fed to keep interest rates low until unemployment has dropped substantially. In an interview, Mr. Kocherlakota said Mr. Werning is a “brilliant economist” and that this paper is “really important.”...MORE
*Alphaville has been on top of Kocherlakota's importance for a while now:

Sept. 20
The Kocherlakota Rule
Sept. 2
Jedi Kocherlakota on the ways of the FOMC force
Aug. 16 
Stop the market – the Fed wants to get off
Aug 17 
A telling speech