Wealth & Money Quote by Martin Feldstein

Feldstein is trying to sell an apparent free lunch: a “strong dollar” that tames inflation at home while somehow becoming “more competitive” abroad. That tension is the point. In the late-20th-century policy world Feldstein helped shape, “price stability” isn’t just a technocratic goal; it’s a moralized benchmark of seriousness, a signal to bond markets that the adults are in charge. By leading with the Federal Reserve, he frames the problem as monetary discipline rather than, say, industrial policy, labor bargaining power, or fiscal redistribution. It’s a power move disguised as neutral economics.

The subtext is a careful triangulation between two anxious constituencies: consumers and creditors who fear inflation, and exporters and manufacturers who fear losing share to cheaper foreign competitors. He borrows the political sheen of balance - “both...and” - to imply that tradeoffs are optional if the Fed calibrates correctly. But a “strong dollar” typically means an appreciated currency, which can hurt exports; calling it “more competitive” smuggles in an unstated mechanism (productivity gains, lower unit labor costs, or credibility-driven capital inflows that keep inflation low enough to sustain growth). The sentence does what central-bank rhetoric often does: it turns distributional conflict into a question of fine-tuning.

Context matters: Feldstein, a prominent Harvard economist and Reagan-era CEA chair, operated in an era when inflation-fighting was elevated after the 1970s, and globalization was rewriting the stakes of currency policy. The quote reads like an argument for a Goldilocks regime - tight enough to anchor prices, deft enough to keep growth politically saleable - with the Fed cast as the indispensable manager of that balancing act.