Free the Fed

This may be the only time in my natural life that I will ever agree with Mitt Romney.  It proves that he's human; even he can't be wrong all the time.  I just hope that he doesn't reverse himself in the name of consistency. 

So what am I talking about?  Yesterday Mitt urged the Fed NOT to apply more stimulus to the supine economy.  And why is he right? Because the responsibility to resurrect the economy at this point is not with Ben Bernanke and the Fed, or with President Obama and the Executive Branch, but with a Congress that as been too timid on one side of the aisle and too ignorant on the other side...in both houses.

Whatever bullets the Fed may have in its clip are too limited to be of benefit, and on a good day it is using a shotgun, not a sniper rifle.  It can influence economic context to a small degree, but it cannot carefully target impact to maximum effect.

Business, the supposed engine of job creation, is still cowering in its foxhole.  It's waiting for someone to come out with an all-clear sign so that our self-styled, self-appointed, self-compensated risk-taking bucanneers of free enterprise can come out to play.

That leaves Congress which, if consistency is a virtue, has consistently impeded, if not opposed, so many measures that could stimulate the economy to the benefit of all, and could gradually steer it from self-indulgent and unsustainable consumption to productive investment in a prosperous and more sustainable future.

It is Congress, and not Ben Bernanke which must act; and act now. 

It would be most helpful for Mr. Romney to contemplate this truth with his own future in mind. Whether he gets to redecorate the White House, or Mr. Obama remains for another term, the current probability is that both will face the same Congress that we now have, or worse if the American electorate does not arise from its stupor.

Free the Fed.

Fix the fault where it lies.

Onward

20120805

Copyright 2012