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Media Reviews and Mentions of
Getting It Wrong by William A. Barnett

Media Reviews

Economic Record, Selwyn Cornish, June 2013
Professor Selwyn Cornish of Australian National University compares Ben S. Bernanke's The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis with William A. Barnett's Getting It Wrong in his paired book review. Professor Cornish's reviews include these statements: "These two books attribute blame for the crisis in different degrees to the Fed, Bernanke stressing its inadequate supervision and regulation of the financial system, while William Barnett emphasizes the poor quality of the Fed's monetary statistics...Regarded by many as the world's foremost authority on the measurement of financial aggregates, his [Barnett's] book explains how faulty monetary statistics led the Fed into conducting inappropriate monetary policy. As a consequence, investors incorrectly assessed risk: leverage rose, and risk-taking activity flourished..." More

KU Economist, Chris Courtwright, Fall 2012
The general public had a unique opportunity in April to hear a lecture and get autographed copies of a tremendously important new book by Dr. William A. Barnett, the Oswald Distinguished Professor of Macroeconomics at KU. More

Economic History Association, Peter Ferderer, July 2012
It is widely agreed that excessive risk-taking led to the sub-prime financial crisis and the Great Recession. Mortgages without down payments, historically high leverage ratios, maturity mismatch, and the list goes on. What were people thinking? Was it mass hysteria? More

Choice magazine, M.H. Lesser, June 2012
The recent financial crisis and the ensuing great recession have produced dozens of books proffering explanations and analyses of the sources of these events. Barnett (Univ. of Kansas) states, “I agree with all of them.” But he offers a cogent, compelling argument for a ... More

Bloomberg, James Pressley, May 2012
Pressley selects Getting It Wrong as one of his top business book recommendations. Poor monetary data were a root cause of the financial crisis, argues Barnett, a University of Kansas economist and former Federal Reserve Board staffer. More

Kansas City Star, Mark Davis, April 2012
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, has been a bit defensive lately. Perhaps for good reason, and maybe for more reasons than he has acknowledged. Much criticism of the Fed has citied its persistent low interest rate policies of the early 2000s. Fed ... More

Bloomberg, James Pressley, Feb 2012
Pick a rogue, any rogue: Villains pervade the story of the worst financial train wreck since 1929.Yet economist William A. Barnett resists the urge to wag a scolding finger at greedy bankers, feckless homebuyers or even Alan Greenspan, whom he calls a salesman, not a ... More

The Economist, Economist Intelligence Unit, January 2012
According to "Getting it Wrong", the build-up of excessive leverage and runaway risk-taking could have been prevented by the greater availability and better use of statistics, particularly monetary metrics and aggregates. As a former Fed staffer, William Barnett, ... More

Media Mentions

Globe Asia, Professor Steve H. Hanke, June 2014
Once again Professor Hanke uses CFS money statistics in assessing the Federal Reserve's policies and in doing so, he provides an intuitive and easily understood explanation of Divisia measures. More

Globe Asia, Professor Steve H. Hanke, November 2013
Professor Hanke uses CFS money statistics in assessing the Federal Reserve's policies towards money supply. More

Globe Asia, Professor Steve H. Hanke, June 2013
Professor Hanke looks at money supply in the United States, Great Britain, the Eurozone, and China. More

Energy Tribune, Professor Steve H. Hanke, January 2013
In this article titled "Rethinking Conventional Wisdom: A Monetary Tour d'Horizon for 2013," Professor Hanke discards conventional wisdom about simple-sum accounting of money supply and argues for the weighted approach of CFS Divisia measures. More

Globe Asia, Professor Steve H. Hanke, January 2013
Professor Hanke uses CFS money supply calculations in his Globe Asia column. More

Financial Times, Professor Douglas Irwin, October 2012
Dartmouth Professor Douglas Irwin features CFS money supply calculations in his FT Opinion piece where he asserts that the best way to judge monetary policy is through money supply growth. More

Macro and Other Market Musings, Professor David Beckworth, September 2012
In his blog about excess money demand, Professor Beckworth references the Center for Financial Stability’s Divisia M4 measure as his source for retail and institutional money assets. More

Forbes, Brian Domitrovic, August 2012
Brian Domitrovic makes a case that U.S. money supply growth has been low or negative during the financial crisis and Great Recession and continues to be low, despite “quantitative easing.” He cites William A. Barnett’s recent book and 1980 paper, as well as Steve Hanke’s articles, as primary sources of the correct methodology. Domitrovic refers to Barnett’s 1980 seminal article as an “eye-popping article in an academic journal.” More

Wall Street Pit, Professor David Beckworth, July 2012
Professor Beckworth argues that the relative shortage of money implies a deficiency of aggregate nominal expenditures and correlates the shortage of money with the output gap. Key to this view is a broader classification of money which includes institutional money assets, as provided by the Center for Financial Stability’s Divisia M4. More

Financial Post, Professor Steve H. Hanke, June 2012
Professor Hanke uses the CFS Divisia M4 numbers to measure total broad money supply in his analysis of Fed-supplied money versus privately produced money. More

The International Gottfried von Haberler Conference, Steve Hanke, June 2012
Professor Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University uses CFS Divisia money supply data to illustrate how the Fed enabled both aggregate and market-specific demand bubbles... More

Globe Asia, Professor Steve H. Hanke, July 2012
Professor Hanke praises the CFS Divisia money supply numbers and shows how Divisia would have provided more useful data, thus enabling better decision making. Hanke explains why broad measures of money are most indicative and explains the concept behind “moneyness” and needing to weight assets differently. More

Wall Street Pit, Professor David Beckworth, June 2012
In his blog post titled “Money Still Matters,” Professor Beckworth argues that institutional investor assets, including primary money market securities, must be considered part of the money supply and that broader measures are needed beyond M2, which is limited to retail monetary assets produced by financial intermediaries. His money supply measure of choice for the United States is the Center for Financial Stability’s Divisia M4. More

Globe Asia, Professor Steve H. Hanke, June 2012
Professor Hanke looks at broad money growth rates in the US, the Euro area, the UK, and Japan. His source for US annual money supply growth rates is the Center for Financial Stability’s Divisia M4. More

Power Lunch, Krista Klaus, April 2012
William A. Barnett comments on the current inadequate money supply data; how it is leading to misperceptions of the economy; and how the situation will be rectified. More

Hürriyet Daily News, Ege Cansen, March 2012
Ege Cansen references the work of William A. Barnett Divisia M4 in Turkey’s leading high-circulation newspaper. More

Globe Asia, Professor Steve H. Hanke, March 2012
Professor Hanke cites William A. Barnett’s Divisia M4 measure as being the best metric for U.S. broad money and uses it to track broad money growth. More

Newmark’s Door, Craig Newmark, March 2012
In a blog by economist Craig Newmark, he cites Getting It Wrong as validation that the Fed is measuring the money supply badly. More

HistorySquared, Brendan Dornan, February 2012
Brendan Dornan’s blog highlights Getting It Wrong. More

Monetary Freedom, Bill Woolsey, January 2012
In his blog, Bill Woolsey comments on the merits of using the Divisia approach in measuring the quantity of money. More

Market Monetarist, Lars Christensen, January 2012
In his blog, Lars Christensen relates Divisia money to Steven Horwitz’s concept of “moneyness.” More

Globe Asia, Professor Steve H. Hanke, December 2011
Author Steve H. Hanke compares Divisia M4 to the Fed’s M2 and explains why Divisia M4 is the best measure of broad money supply. More

Energy Tribune, Professor Steve H. Hanke, October 2011
Professor Barnett’s Divisia M4 data on the U.S. is referenced in this article. More

Valor Economico, Sergio Lamucci, May 2011
In Brazil’s leading newspaper, Professor Barnett cites the Fed’s use of poor quality data as the decisive reason for the financial crisis and says that the country is still vulnerable to the same problems. More

More about Getting It Wrong

Endorsements from Experts
Read endorsements from leading scholars and policy makers. More

Overview of the Book
Return to the overview of the book and the biography of the author. More