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Article: Arthur Burns and inflation.
- Article from:
- Economic Quarterly
- Article date:
- January 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Arthur Burns, Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) from February 1970 until December 1977, was fiercely opposed to inflation. For the public, and especially for the business community, Burns embodied opposition to inflation. Nevertheless, during his tenure as head of the Fed, high rates of inflation became a pervasive fact of American life. How could that have happened?
The puzzle is especially striking as Burns became Chairman with an extraordinarily distinguished background as an economist. He had been president of the American Economics Association and had headed the prestigious National Bureau of Economic ...