Turns out Sarah Palin was right.
Obamacare does have Death Panels, and they are currently disguised as the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee.
In this week when Obamacare finally turns one day old, the political problems that our economic recovery face have never been on better display.
While the stock market makes new highs, even the Fed is acknowledging that this recovery is different. And because it’s different, Wall Street is winning and Main Street is losing.
“Although we work through financial markets, our goal is to help Main Street, not Wall Street,” said the People’s Commissar of Banking Janet Yellen, chair of the largest bank in the history of the world, wholly owned by Congress and the member banks.
Viva la Humans!
Because if the goal is to help Main Street, the Fed has been a pretty poor instrument. And that’s how it should be.
Even economists agree that there is a limited amount any central bank can do to affect the economy with monetary policy.
That too is as it should be.
Imagine a world where the Federal Reserve not only engineered monetary policy, but was social policy was well.
Oh that’s right, you don’t have to. They do that already.
And that’s largely why you see a tale of two economies.
The Fed is trying to aid and abet the government in its insatiable appetite for more cash.
That’s why manufacturing drove a rebound in the economy in March. Or, on the other hand, maybe it didn’t.
Two widely watched indicators of strength in the economy, the ISM survey of manufacturers and a similar index put out by Markit showed varying degrees confidence that the economy is expanding.
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“Fourteen of the 18 industries tracked by the ISM said their companies posted growth in March,” writes MarketWatch, “and almost every respondent said either their business or the economy is getting better.”
Yet MarketWatch also reports that the widely watched private estimate from Markit showed growth in manufacturing stagnant or slowing.
“New orders dipped to 58.1 from 59.6 and employment fell to 53.9 from 54.1 in February,” reports the online finance site. “The slight dropoff in the March PMI comes after the Markit index rose in February to the highest level in almost four years, helped by manufacturers catching up after winter-related softness in January.”
Not coincidentally, the market is also of two minds regarding the comments from Yellen, who yesterday said that the Fed’s commitment to stimulus efforts remains unabated.
“This extraordinary commitment is still needed and will be for some time, and I believe that view is widely shared by my fellow policy makers,” Yellen said Monday. “The scars from the Great Recession remain, and reaching our goals will take time.”
Some see her comments as proof that the economy is on the mend, because the Fed remains committed to winding down quantitative easing and others see it as meaning the Fed won’t raise interest rate any time soon because the economy is too weak.
And both sides are right.
Indisputably things are great on Wall Street.
Indisputably things are terrible on Main Street, as even Yellen acknowledged:
One form of evidence for slack is found in other labor market data, beyond the unemployment rate or payrolls, some of which I have touched on already. For example, the seven million people who are working part time but would like a full-time job. This number is much larger than we would expect at 6.7% unemployment, based on past experience, and the existence of such a large pool of "partly unemployed" workers is a sign that labor conditions are worse than indicated by the unemployment rate.
With a record amount of money on Wall Street via the Fed, jobs can only come from one place.
It’s not the Federal Reserve Bank and it’s not Wall Street.
It’s Washington, DC that’s mucking up the works. And frankly the blame rests squarely with Democrats: Obamacare, Keystone, Wars on Wages, etc.
Obamacare alone is the single most labor-force disfiguring social program ever foisted on us by the Democrats.
And they’ve all done their part.
It’s time the Death Panels did theirs.
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