He is the author of Finance and Philosophy—Why We’re Always Surprised (2018) and Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity (2011), as well as numerous articles and Congressional testimony.
Pollock is a graduate of Williams College, the University of Chicago, and Princeton University.
“The math of 2 percent compound shrinkage demonstrates that the Fed wants to depreciate the dollar’s purchasing power by 80 percent in each average lifetime. Somehow the Fed never mentions this.” ~Alex Pollock
“Congress should applaud Chairman Powell’s candor on uncertainty and strongly support his principle of operating the Fed within the limits of its mandate.” ~Alex J. Pollock
“Both long Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by government agencies are in current regulation included as ‘High Quality Liquid Assets.’ But of course they both can and have created plenty of interest rate risk.” ~Alex J. Pollock
“In The Currency of Politics, Stefan Eich has written a valuable and very interesting review of specific monetary debates in their historical settings during centuries of thought about the nature of money as it is entwined with politics.” ~ Alex J. Pollock
“Volcker’s victory over runaway inflation was not permanent, because the temptation to governments and their central banks of excessive printing, monetization of government deficits, and levying inflation taxes is permanent.” ~ Alex J. Pollock
“The current push to expand the Fed’s mandates is consistent with Shull’s Paradox, which states that the more blunders the Fed makes, the more powers and prestige it gets. But we should be reducing the Fed’s powers and mandates, not increasing them.” ~ Alex J. Pollock
“It is the special function of the entrepreneur to generate unpredictable change and the economic profit or loss, progress or mistakes, that result from it.” ~ Alex J. Pollock