An anti-Patriotic Government versus the Federal Reserve
The fact that the Federal Reserve has had the Fed bank rate at 0% for years and years now is the key economic thing everyone has to understand.
This is operationally the same as if there was a law saying, "The Federal Reserve cannot cut interest rates." If there was such a law almost everyone would recognize how destructive that law was. But in this case the law is math.
The Federal Reserve cannot cut interest rates below zero, and the Fed rate has been at zero for 4-5 years, and will remain at zero for at least two more years.
In a world where the federal reserve cannot cut rates the power to stimulate the economy falls entirely to Congress and the White House.
If the US Government does not take effective steps to maintain the economy and the Fed cannot cut rates the Fed has very few options.
What little the Fed can do to prop up the economy is not optimal policy. It is merely what the Fed can do. The Fed cannot start a WPA. The Fed cannot institute tax holidays. All the Fed can do is weird portfolio management.
The little the Fed can do these last 4-5 years is to influence asset markets in a way that pumps up the stock market, which then has a modest "wealth effect" as some of those profits spill over into buying house or car or something.
The Fed has no real choice, insofar as things would be even worse if the stock market wasn't pumped up.
And the market friendly policies will persist (and should persist, since the alternative helps nobody) until we get unemployment down.
If "we" can keep unemployment high then there is no telling how high the markets can go.
And the more the Federal Government hinders the economy the more doggedly the Fed has to try to counter that hindrance... and the Fed has very little power to help anyone except in trickle-down fashion.
A lot of the Republican war-on-the-economy is to make Obama look bad... but that is not necessarily the only factor.
When the party receiving the disability checks is not the party with the injury then the person receiving the checks is not in a hurry for that injury to heal.
