Arthur Burns, Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve System from February 1970 until December 1977, was fiercely opposed to inflation. Yet, over his eight-year tenure, prices increased at an annualized rate of 6.5 percent. Why? One reason was Burns's belief that...

A consensus now exists that central banks, which possess a monopoly over the creation of fiat money (the monetary base), control trend inflation. But how do they exercise this control, especially given that their use of the interest rate as the policy instrument renders money endogenous...