{"id":5543,"date":"2015-02-11T06:26:24","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T11:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5543"},"modified":"2015-02-11T06:26:24","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T11:26:24","slug":"audit-the-fed-and-shackle-it-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5543","title":{"rendered":"Audit The Fed\u2014\u2014And Shackle It, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/davidstockmanscontracorner.com\/audit-the-fed-and-shackle-it-too\/\" target=\"_blank\">Audit The Fed\u2014\u2014And Shackle It, Too<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>The reason to be fearful about the economic and financial future is that we are in the thrall of a mainstream consensus that is downright\u00a0meretricious. In attacking Rand Paul\u2019s audit legislation, for instance, one of the time-servers on the Fed Board of Governors,\u00a0Jerome H.\u00a0Powell, let loose the following gem:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAs recent U.S. history has shown,\u00a0<em><strong>elected officials have often pushed for easier policies that serve short-term political interests\u2026..\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Perhaps Mr. Powell is a descendent of Rip Van Winkle\u2014\u2013and\u00a0missed the last 20 years of history while doing LBOs at the Carlyle Group and helping Congress\u00a0improve upon its\u00a0enviable record of fiscal management while\u00a0at the Bipartisan Policy Center.\u00a0But whatever he was doing\u2014snoozing or otherwise distracted\u2014-\u00a0it most assuredly\u00a0was not\u00a0gathering evidence that \u201celected\u00a0officials\u201d were putting undue pressure on the Fed for \u201ceasier policies\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>For crying out loud there\u00a0is exactly zero evidence that\u00a0\u201cpoliticians\u201d had anything\u00a0to do with\u00a0zero interest rates.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>And ZIRP defines\u00a0the ultimate level of \u201cease\u201d\u00a0according to Bernanke himself, who famously described his\u00a0policies as positioned at the\u00a0\u201czero bound\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, given\u00a0the\u00a0very earliest expected date for \u201clift-off\u201d in June, the Fed will have pinned the money market rate at zero for 80 months running.\u00a0<em><strong>This\u00a0unprecedented tsunami of \u201ceasy money\u201d, of course,\u00a0happened with nary a Congressman or Senator darkening the door at the Eccles Building<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Audit The Fed\u2014\u2014And Shackle It, Too The reason to be fearful about the economic and financial future is that we are in the thrall of a mainstream consensus that is downright\u00a0meretricious. In attacking Rand Paul\u2019s audit legislation, for instance, one of the time-servers on the Fed Board of Governors,\u00a0Jerome H.\u00a0Powell, let loose the following gem: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3416,303,3417,305,431,2151,2305,1940,1939],"class_list":["post-5543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-audit-the-fed","tag-fed","tag-fed-board-of-governors","tag-federal-reserve","tag-interest-rates","tag-monetary-easing","tag-rand-paul","tag-zero-interest-rate-policy","tag-zirp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5544,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5543\/revisions\/5544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}