Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has kicked up quite a storm with an interview he did with me for Bloomberg Businessweek’s “Interview Issue” (on sale at newsstands now!). At issue are Paul’s views on—and grasp of—monetary policy, based on this exchange:
What’s the problem? In a nutshell, Paul is an avowed devotee of the Austrian School of economics and objects to the Federal Reserve’s printing money to help the economy recover from recession. (In this 2010 profile of Ron Paul, Rand’s dad, I lay out the Austrian response—nonresponse, actually—to the 2008 financial crisis and explain how the views of hard-money types like the Pauls differ from those of most mainstream economists.)
