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| John P. Cochran |
Readers should be made aware of
this thoughtful response by John P. Cochran to attempts to dismiss and/or discredit Austrian monetary theory by Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong. Always the gentleman, Cochran recognizes that too often academics, and in this case especially De Long, are not. Cochran gets to the heart of the problem when he identifies that Krugman's and DeLong's attacks read, at best, willfully ignorant, and at worst, seemingly downright misleading. As he notes:
Given the major works by Mises (and Hayek) are now readily available in
English translations (or were written in English), Delong and Krugman
have no such excuse for their straw-man presentations, which exhibit
laziness, intentional lack of scholarly effort, and a deliberate
misrepresentation to make their case to discredit appear stronger.
Cochran then explains key features of Mises' monetary theory, showing that "Mises's framework is 'so so so so so so so so so' [here Cochran is quoting DeLong, SR] believably correct and
most relevant to today's economy and should be the basis for a current
policy that would lead to a sustainable recovery and long-needed
monetary reform to better prevent future depressions." In doing so, he provides a valuable service by pointing interested parties to investigate the development of Mises' monetary theory by numerous contemporary economists. The entire article repays careful reading.
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