Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's column this week is about the inadvisability of piling more regulations (paid sick and maternity leave, no discrimination against previously unemployed job applicants) onto the already weak labor market. But the passage in his column that caught my eye was about the dollar:
The debate over the proper level of government spending and taxation is itself a powerful cause of our current economic malaise. The current uncertainty over the use of these key policy levers leads to further uncertainty about the possibility of a rise in interest rates that will send the economy into a tailspin. Unstable currency injects a gratuitous element of uncertainty into every private transaction denominated in dollars.
