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Scott Sumner

The Money Illusion: Market Monetarism, the Great Recession, and the Future of Monetary Policy First Edition

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The first book-length work on market monetarism, written by its leading scholar.

Is it possible that the consensus around what caused the 2008 Great Recession is almost entirely wrong? It’s happened before. Just as Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz led the economics community in the 1960s to reevaluate its view of what caused the Great Depression, the same may be happening now to our understanding of the first economic crisis of the 21st century.

Foregoing the usual relitigating of problems such as housing markets and banking crises, renowned monetary economist Scott Sumner argues that the Great Recession came down to one thing: nominal GDP, the sum of all nominal spending in the economy, which the Federal Reserve erred in allowing to plummet. The Money Illusion is an end-to-end case for this school of thought, known as market monetarism, written by its leading voice in economics. Based almost entirely on standard macroeconomic concepts, this highly accessible text lays the groundwork for a simple yet fundamentally radical understanding of how monetary policy can work best: providing a stable environment for a market economy to flourish.

ISBN-10

022677368X
ISBN-13

978-0226773681
Edition

First
Publisher

University of Chicago Press
Publication date

September 3, 2021
Language

English
Dimensions

6 x 1.8 x 9 inches
Print length

392 pages
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Editorial Reviews

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"This thoughtful and broad-ranging critique of the post-financial crisis consensus on macroeconomic policy is worth reading for anyone interested in monetary policy. . . . Some may wonder why anyone today would write (or read) a book raking over the [2008] financial crisis, when the world has moved on to dealing with the pandemic, war in Europe, and how to manage economic policy in an era of wild political see-saws. In fact, Sumner’s book is of great significance to our current crises, and his challenge to conventional wisdom is bracing." -- Kenneth Rogoff ― Times Literary Supplement

"Were I still teaching monetary economics, I wouldn't hesitate to assign it, not as a textbook, but as the testament of one of today's most original monetary economists. For The Money Illusion is capable of teaching them something no textbook ever will, namely, the importance of thinking for oneself." -- George Selgin ― Barron's

"[An] illuminating journey of our macroeconomic past, and the shrouded role that monetary mismatches played in past recessions. . . . It's the kind of book where you learn something on every single page—often several astonishing things." ― Frontier Post

"The leading authority on market monetarism re-evaluates the 2008 Recession, rejecting the consensus on the origins of the crisis, and narrows it down to a single cause: allowing the nominal GDP to plummet." ― Bookseller (UK)

"As the world’s leading 'market monetarist,' Sumner has forced economists and policymakers to rethink their approach to monetary policy, particularly since the Great Recession of 2008–9. This long-awaited book is clearly and effectively written and brings Sumner's unique and valuable perspective into full view." -- Douglas Irwin, Dartmouth College

"Sumner summarizes, clearly and concisely, lessons drawn from a lifetime of studying both monetary theory and economic history. He skillfully shows how his market monetarist framework helps us understand what went wrong in 2008 and what it will take to bring growth and stability back to the US economy." -- Peter Ireland, Boston College

"Sumner has assembled all of his ideas and commentary since the beginning of the Great Recession regarding monetary policy, encompassing his writing in journals, books, blogs, and policy papers. Given that Sumner is basically the standard bearer of the market monetarists, this is a welcome task. His systematic application of market monetarism to the Great Recession constitutes a valuable contribution and will probably be used as a reference by many. The virtue of the book is that it is accessible to all." -- Vincent Geloso, King's University College

"Sumner uses his well-honed blogging skills to explain, for both amateur and professional economists, the 'market monetarist' perspective. The high point is his historical analysis of monetary policy, in the United States and elsewhere, during the 2008 Great Recession. Sumner's thesis directly contradicts the prevailing view that central banks simply lacked the power to offset the overwhelming force of a massive financial shock, and I think his analysis will eventually prove convincing." -- Nick Rowe, Carleton University

About the Author

Scott Sumner is the Ralph G. Hawtrey Chair of Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is the author of The Midas Paradox: Financial Markets, Government Policy Shocks, and the Great Depression and the economics blog TheMoneyIllusion.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; First edition (September 3, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 392 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 022677368X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0226773681
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.8 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #687,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #72 in Macroeconomics (Books)
- #1,628 in Economic History (Books)

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David R.

Fantastic Book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 28, 2023

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Even more relevant today than it was at publishing date.

Helpful

T Ramsey

Coherent, Accessible, and Persuasive View of Macroeconomics

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 5, 2021

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The ideas outlined in The Money Illusion provide a framework for understanding causes of changes in the macroeconomy.

The author, Scott Sumner, rose to prominence during and on the heels of the "Great Recession" of 2007-09 with his unorthodox explanations of why the Federal Reserve was prolonging, rather than shortening, the recession. As time passed, Sumner's predictions continued to be accurate while more prominent economists were proven wrong. Sumner moved from the fringe to the mainstream in March 2020 when the Federal Reserve acted in massive, unprecedented fashion with asset purchases in line with Sumner's recommendations -- and turned what could well have turned into a global Great Depression into a somewhat "ordinary", and short, recession.

The Money Illusion is the first book accessible to lay people to provide a systematic understanding of Sumner's views.

Parts 1-3 discuss the history of models of macroeconomics like Keynesianism, strict Monetarism, New Keynesian, neo-Fisherian, Rational Expectations and New Classical models. The book goes on to explain Sumner's explanations for the shortcomings of each of these theories, with multiple and meticulous examples of those shortcomings. Later, the book lays out the underpinnings of Market Monetarism, the name ascribed to the school of thought of Sumner and like-thinking economists.

The Money Illusion goes on to explain why Market Monetarism is the best approach to the uber-complex problem of "managing" -- a term Sumner would abhor -- the growth of the national, and world, economy. It further explains why the media and public obsession with interest rates as the measure of economic policy is misguided and counterproductive.

The Money Illusion reads like a well-written mystery, as Sumner wanders through the history and shortcomings of conventional economic thought, leaving this reader anxious to turn the page to learn how the mystery unfolds. While probably not appropriate for most high schoolers, the book, with graphs instead of mathematics, is certainly accessible to anyone with some college with a sincere desire to understand the economy.

It is impossible to run randomized controlled trials on the national and international economies. We may never know objective truth about these complex systems. So while we can't know The Money Illusion portrays objective truth, we can know that Market Monetarism explained the Great Recession in real time, although not many were listening. We can also know that Market Monetarism explained what the Federal Reserve should do in March 2020, in real time, and that the Fed's interventions worked, likely saving the global economy. Because of its accessibility to lay people, The Money Illusion may prove to be the most important book ever written on economic theory.

Read this book.

3 people found this helpful

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Robert Ray

An explanation of how monetary policy works and doesn't

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 25, 2021

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This is a very interesting review of macroeconomics and central banking policies. His advocacy of market monetarism is pretty persuasive, perhaps as much as for how other policies aren't reliable as for his own theory. However I have some doubts. As a believer in Efficient Market Theory I suspect he doesn't allow enough room for emotion, particularly the old financial standards of fear and greed. While it is true that the 2008 recession owed a lot to the Fed's cuts to the money supply from early 2007 the final collapse owes a lot to the panic generated when too many creditors suddenly realized that their loans weren't likely to be repaid (exacerbated when Paulson and Bernanke were visibly panicked on national TV). I am also skeptical that central bankers can reliably 'manage' the economy (especially when macroeconomists have quite different ideas on how to do it); the Fed and the ECB had been trying for years to get inflation up to 2 % without any success before the demand boom after Covid-19. It's one thing to chart a course for nominal GNP and another to get it. And I have a moral objection to Sumner's implied acceptance of zero interest rates. For most of the poor with their only savings in a bank account interest on their deposits is their only hope for getting ahead, not to mention all the distortions zero rates provoke all across the economy.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 1, 2022

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The book represents a desperate attempt to rescue monetarism. But much like the ancient attempts to salvage a geocentric view of the universe, the book uses a variety of ptolemaic epicycles to "prove" its point. Evidentiary guideposts are continually shifting under the constraints of an assumption that capitalism is stable and that the economy would always equilibrate back to the never defined natural rate of unemployment. And much of this occurs through a hubris that says that the book does for monetarism what John Maynard Keynes did for macroeconomics!

The holy grail of the book thus remains its quest for THE monocausal monetary mechanism that will explain the Great Recession of 2008 along with just about everything else. Institutional factors and contrary evidence are quietly shunted off to the side. The fact that money itself is becoming blurred in this cyber world is not mentioned. Problems with the velociity of money in a universe where you can buy an IRA in a grocery store is also blithely put aside. Indeed, the world of financial engineering - with its derivatives, mortgage backed securities, and complex financial models that very few people understand - is something that the book would not even entertain in its drive to provide a right of center monocausal etiology. In this sense, the book has a messianic fervor that should appeal to monetary acolytes and other conservative devotees who have felt left out in the wilderness during the last two decades.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Alun

Money

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 29, 2022

Verified Purchase

Great book. Loved the point that metal coinage i.e. silver was worth more than "normal" metal coinage

RDBM

Great book on monetary policy

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 28, 2021

Verified Purchase

Unusually well-written popular economics book. After reading this book, I am now much more sympathetic to the market monetarism view of the great rescission. The book is both accessible to the general public and worth reading if you are an economist. I usually find that only one of these things is true.

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