“This paper tests for the existence of asymmetric information between the Federal Reserve and the public by examining Federal Reserve and commercial inflation forecasts. It demonstrates that the Federal Reserve has considerable information about inflation beyond what is known to commercial forecasters....

“In a recent article in this journal, Giffin, Macomber, and Berry (1981), hereafter referred to as GMB, attempt to test the hypothesis that larger deficits cause increases in the money supply and hence inflation. To test the debt monetization hypothesis, they analyze U.S. data for the period 1959-79....

“The sharp rise in the rate of inflation in 1973, after two years of diminishing rates, was a great surprise to many. What was the primary cause? Many rea-sons have been advanced to explain this change, some of them logical, and some not. Most of the explanations are based, in one way or another,...

“In his presidential address to the American Economic Association (AEA), Milton Friedman (1968) warned not to expect too much from monetary policy. In particular, Friedman argued that monetary policy could not permanently influence the levels of real output, unemployment, or real rates of return...

“Recent studies by Rolnick and Weber (1983, 1984) have presented evidence challenging the conventional view of the Free Banking Era (1837-1863). The conventional view depicts a period of financial chaos in which lenient regulations gave rise to a plethora of banks, bank notes and coun-terfeit bank...