Herbert Stein v. John Tamny on Oil Prices and Monetary Policy

John Tamny starts his latest op-ed with some wisdom from Herbert Stein:

Seeking to shift blame away from the Federal Reserve and the Nixon White House for the oil shocks of the early 1970s, the late Herbert Stein said, “My devotion to the old-time religion is not so great as to make me believe that M1 or the full-employment budget deficit determines the amount of rainfall in the Russian wheat lands, the location of Peruvian anchovies or the decisions of the oil cartel.”

I wish he would have skipped the “seeking to shift blame away from the Federal Reserve and the Nixon White House for the oil shocks of the early 1970s” nonsense AS WELL AS THE REST OF THIS OP-ED. As usual Tamny confuses nominal prices with relative prices. The variability of the relative price of oil prices has little to do with U.S. monetary policy. Herbert Stein understood this simple point – but also John Tamny does not.