I can’t bear to watch myself on TV, so you’ll have to tell me how awkward I look. The format presents several challenges, you don’t see the other person, you have a number of topics to cover, and you want to get certain points across (but also seem conversational.) In addition, the audience is unseen (unlike a seminar) and thus it’s hard to know if the level of discussion is appropriate. Fortunately Mark Thoma is very friendly and easy to talk to, so despite our occasional policy differences it was a very pleasant discussion. Of course I later thought of a 100 points I should have mentioned, and thus below I will link to some posts that new visitors might want to look at if they are interested in a more coherent explanation of my views of the crisis.
For a view of what went wrong with monetary policy look here.
For my policy recommendations look here and here.
For some data supporting the reverse causality view look here and here.
For evidence that tight money causes low interest rates look here and here.
For my views on market efficiency look here.
For my views on forward-looking monetary policy look here.
For my views on the General Theory look here and here.
For my views on fiscal stimulus look here.
I also tend to do non-monetary posts on Sunday. Here is one on neoliberalism and cultural values.
I think that people have a natural level of success, or set point, based on their personal characteristics. Although it is hard to evaluate oneself, I suspect my economic intuition is above average and my poise and presentation skills are below average. The intuition works to my advantage in the blog format, but less so on TV. Of course luck also plays a role in success, and I was fortunate to get some very favorable reviews from people like Tyler Cowen, Will Wilkinson, and Greg Mankiw. Those reviews might have boosted me from below to above my set point. We’ll see if my TV appearance puts me back at my natural set point. (I recall that people used to talk about a “Peter principle,” but I haven’t heard that term recently.)
Here is the link.