Marvin Seth Goodfriend was an American economist. He was a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University. He was previously the director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Following his 2017 nomination to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the White House decided to forgo renominating Goodfriend at the beginning of the new term. He was known for his opposition to monetary instruments such as quantitative easing and bond buying programs.
From 2005 until his death, Goodfriend served as the Friends of Allan H. Meltzer Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. His teaching and research interests include macroeconomic fluctuations, monetary theory and policy, banking and financial markets, and economic development. Prior to his teaching career, from 1993 to 2005 he was director of research and policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. In this capacity, he regularly attended meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C. from 1993 to 2005. Before that, he was an economic advisor at the White House in 1984 and 1985. Goodfriend was frequently engaged with central banks such as the European Central Bank, Norges Bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, and the Swiss National Bank, and has been a visiting scholar at several of them. He was also engaged in teaching activities on monetary theory and policy in China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Switzerland. In November 2017, Goodfriend was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill one of the vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Fiscal policy positions
Goodfriend has been described as conservative and was skeptical of monetary policy instruments that were employed by the Federal Reserve under Janet Yellen. He was a critic of an actively regulating role of the Fed and has repeatedly argued against the current form of quantitative easing as well as bond buying programs, especially the purchases of mortgage-backed securities. In 2008, Goodfriend warned that the Federal Reserve's actions would cause higher inflation; a prediction that never materialized. Asked at a Senate confirmation hearing for a seat on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors in January 2018 why he got his prediction wrong, Goodfriend did not give an explanation and instead spoke of the value of low inflation. Goodfriend agreed with Yellen regarding the aim of shrinking the Fed's $4.5-trillion balance sheet, much of which it acquired through bond buying programs. He supported a rules based monetary policy, which would limit the freedom of action of the Federal Reserve bank in favor of a more mathematically based approach. He has also been willing to consider unusual monetary instruments in times of crisis, such as negative rates as used by the Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, and other institutions in Europe. On March 16, 2017, Goodfriend testified before the Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Financial Services. His testimony was titled "The Fed Needs a Credible Commitment to Price Stability". He argued that the current commitment to price stability of the Fed lacks reliability.
Memberships
Goodfriend was a member of the Shadow Open Market Committee, an independent group of economists who strive for a new way of thinking about monetary politics. Goodfriend was co-editor with Stan Zin of the Carnegie Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, the International Journal of Central Banking, and the Journal of Monetary Economics.
Personal
Goodfriend died at his home in Pittsburgh on December 5, 2019, aged 69.
