| Sumario: | The article author replies to comments made by several economists on his views on fiscal and monetary policy. Economists Bent Hansen and John Hotson offer little or no objection to the author's critique of monetary policy. As to recent and conventional fiscal policy, they also apparently share the author's reservations but have some strictures of their own to add. Economists Keith Carlson, James Witte and Barbara Henneberry seem content with the rebuke to fiscalists but seek to raise very considerable objection to corresponding questioning of monetary policy. The author has little problems with Hansen's arguments. Witte and Henneberry are correct in arguing that a demonstration that holding the quantity of money constant may not be sufficient to prevent price inflation "does not imply that some reduction of the money supply could not serve to offset an interest-induced rise in velocity." It does not logically follow, however, that "as long as real commodity demand is a decreasing function of the rate of interest, there is some reduction in the quantity of money which would close the inflationary gap." This, after all, depends upon how rapidly a decreasing function one has and just how large an inflationary gap must be closed.
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