Of all the establishment economists, I like Greg Mankiw the best. Not because he isn’t a statist and an inflationist and a centralist; but he has some knowledger of the Austrian School. He is a clear writer, and Joe Salerno tells me Greg’s bestselling textbook is the least-bad of them all. Certainly it is a huge improvement over Paul “admirer of the old Soviet economy” Samuelson’s.

Here is an example of Mankiw’s clear writing: a plea to let the Fed “save” the economy from recession, brought on by Fed monetary expansion, with more monetary expansion. The former Bush economic advisor is right that the White House and Congress should do nothing. If we could geld the Fed, we would have a short, sharp recession, and a chance for sound growth.

Instead, the Fed–in alliance with the bailout-hungry big banks and Wall Street–will further wreck the international and domestic value of the dollar. It will give us that alleged impossibility, the inflatinary recession. It will string out and worsen the recession. It could even ignite hyperinflation of the sort we had in the 1970s, and maybe worse. Then establishment economists will be advocating price, wage, capital and exchange controls–appropriately for the Bush police state. Unless the Ron Paul Revolution can prevent it. (Thanks to Chris Manion.)

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.