Rent Rent Rent Rent

Paul Krugman squares off against Bond King Bill Gross.

Bill Gross is at it again, coming up with yet another reason for the Fed to tighten despite a still-depressed economy and inflation falling well below target. He is, of course, not alone — it has actually been amazing how wide a variety of reasons people in or close to the financial industry have come up for tight money in an economy that seems to need to opposite. Many of the people making these arguments started with dire warnings about runaway inflation; but when inflation failed to materialize, they didn’t change their policy views, they came up with new rationales for doing exactly the same thing.

The thing is, the rentiers just want to collect their rent.

So add the rentiers’ sense of entitlement to the reasons we have made such a botch of macroeconomic policy.

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