Consider the open letter sent to Ben Bernanke, then the chairman of the Federal Reserve, in November 2010. Signed by a long list of economists and commentators, including the Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson and Amity Shlaes of the Council on Foreign Relations, the letter calls on the Federal Reserve to stop its policy of large-scale asset purchases known as “quantitative easing” because it “risk[s] currency debasement and inflation.
