David Wessel has an article asking what Milton Friedman would say about quantitative easing, and concludes that he would have been in favor. But I was struck by Friedman’s 1998 remarks about Japan, in which he basically said that increasing the monetary base would do the trick:
“The Bank of Japan can buy government bonds on the open market…” he wrote in 1998. “Most of the proceeds will end up in commercial banks, adding to their reserves and enabling them to expand…loans and open-market purchases. But whether they do so or not, the money supply will increase…. Higher money supply growth would have the same effect as always. After a year or so, the economy will expand more rapidly; output will grow, and after another delay, inflation will increase moderately.”
Well, they did that: staring in 2000, the BOJ nearly doubled monetary base over a period of 3 years.
And the money just sat there. Banks did not, in fact, expand loans.
In fact, Japan’s experience is a key element of the case against monetarism. Just printing notes does not work when you’re in a liquidity trap.
