Episode
Kris Mitchener on What Actually Anchors the Price Level
Macro Musings with David Beckworth · Apr 13, 2026 · 56 min
Kris Mitchener is a professor of economics at Santa Clara University and is an economic and monetary historian. In Kris's first appearance on the show, he discusses how he fell in love with building data sets out of old dusty archives, the origins and fall of bimetallism, the pros and cons of the gold standard, the problem of operating losses on the Fed's balance sheet, what truly anchors the…