This is a draft oped that didn't make it to the Wall Street Journal. Probably with good reason. I'm thinking about the deflation quandary, and that the Fed may be powerless to stop deflation. How can you implement a commodity standard as a backstop in the US? I think about targeting the TIPS spread. Commodity standards are essentially fiscal commitments; that's the big stick the Fed is missing. Targeting the TIPS spread or equivalent CPI-linked securities could provide the backstop to prevent deflation, and allow the Fed to make the fiscal commitments necessary to stop inflation or deflation.

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