{"id":5401,"date":"2013-09-29T07:14:03","date_gmt":"2013-09-29T13:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5401"},"modified":"2013-09-29T07:14:03","modified_gmt":"2013-09-29T13:14:03","slug":"politics-the-fed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=5401","title":{"rendered":"Politics & The Fed"},"content":{"rendered":"

George Will<\/a>: <\/p>\n

ZIRP, which Yellen ardently supports, is trickle-down economics: Money, searching for yields higher than bonds offered under ZIRP, floods into stocks, the rising value of which supposedly creates a \u201cwealth effect\u201d \u2014 feelings of prosperity that stimulate spending and investing among the 10 percent who own about 80 percent of all stocks.<\/p>\n

ZIRP also makes the Fed an indispensable enabler of big government. By making borrowing, and hence deficits, cheap, ZIRP facilitates the political class\u2019s bipartisan strategy of delivering current benefits while deferring costs. ZIRP also provides cheap credit to big government\u2019s partner, big business.
\nOriginally, in 1913, the Fed\u2019s mission was price stability \u2014 preserving the currency as a store of value. In 1977,Congress created the \u201cdual mandate,\u201d instructing the Fed to maximize employment. This supposedly authorizes the Fed to manipulate the stock market, part of Bernanke\u2019s inflation of the dual mandate into \u201cpromoting a healthy economy.\u201d Is a particular distribution of income unhealthy? The Fed will tell us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interestingly, the Madison School Board recently passed a 2013-2014 budget that features a 4.5% property tax increase<\/a>, after a 9% increase two years ago<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

George Will: ZIRP, which Yellen ardently supports, is trickle-down economics: Money, searching for yields higher than bonds offered under ZIRP, floods into stocks, the rising value of which supposedly creates a \u201cwealth effect\u201d \u2014 feelings of prosperity that stimulate spending and investing among the 10 percent who own about 80 percent of all stocks. ZIRP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}