Krugman's Harshest Post Yet [View all]

[cthulu2016]

This is exceptionally harsh stuff...

But hey, why should the Fed be any different? Not doing the right thing out of concern with what Republicans might say has been a pan-institutional American motif for a while now. It's our defining national personality disorder.

The intimidated Fed: The minimal action — extending Operation Twist — wasn’t just inadequate, it was shameful. The Fed has a dual mandate, employment and price stability. Its own projections show high unemployment persisting for years and years, inflation running below its target — and realistically its inflation projections are too high while its unemployment projections are too low. There is no rational argument I can see for not going all out with monetary stimulus.

But what we actually got was action that was pretty obviously calculated to be the absolute least the Fed could do without generating headlines saying “Fed ignores weak economy”.

I’m sorry, but this looks like pure concession to political intimidation — a Fed refusing to do anything that would let Republicans accuse it of helping Obama. And for the sake of its own political comfort, the Fed is essentially betraying the unemployed.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/brief-notes-from-hiding/