The Chris Moeller Archives

Monetary policy

Interesting exchange this week between Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and a group of African-American congressional reps. When asked what the Fed is doing to address the high rate of unemployment among blacks (9.5% vs. 5.3% overall), Yellon responded, "There really isn’t anything directly the Federal Reserve can do to affect the structure of unemployment across groups, and unfortunately, it’s long been the case that African-American unemployment rates tend to be higher than those on average in the nation as a whole."

What Yellen is missing, however, is that the Fed was established to serve two mandates-- one of which has easily been the top priority over the second for years. The Fed has been very concerned, as a routine, with controlling inflation, and Yellon confirmed her commitment in this week's hearing before the House Financial Services Committee to raising interest rates before the year is out and keeping inflation under 2%. But the other mandated goal of the Fed is to lower unemployment. If the monetary supply is kept tight, by raising interest rates, prices stay low and employment depresses. If they print more money, prices increase, but so do employment numbers.

The Fed continues to obsess over inflation, even though it has been completely absent from the economy for some time. What Yellen is basically saying is that she's okay with a 9.5% unemployment rate for blacks.

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Confused about what's happening in Greece? Then, again, I direct you to the book that has been called "the master narrative of our time"-- Naomi Klein's 2007 international best-seller The Shock Doctrine. We have an inept government in Greece swallowed by predatory privatists. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other disaster capitalists swoop in and demand robust cuts in social services while raising the retirement age and privatizing state industries, such as those in mining and drilling, -- this in a country that has lost a million jobs in six years, and has a 25.6% unemployment rate, 49.7% among young people. These cuts (referred to as austerity) come in exchange for up to 86 billion euros in bailout.

Voters in Greece rejected a call for more austerity in a national referendum earlier in the month and effectively voted to leave the euro, but the nation's government voted this week to agree to their creditor's demands.

What we are really witnessing here is a coup. It is collective punishment against the people of Greece because the banks were leveraging themselves at a ratio of 33 to 1. The bailout is really not for Greece, it's a bailout for European banks that were complicit. The nations of that continent share a currency, but they don't share a fiscal, banking, or political system. The irony is that Germany, among the nations that comprise the eurozone, is leading the attack (Greece's energy minister calls the group "financial assassins"), and these are the exact conditions that led to the rise of fascism in Germany following the Treaty of Versailles. Naomi Klein will have warned us.

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People have really flipped out over Caitlyn Jenner winning the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. Who knew the ESPY's meant anything at all?

Neither Jenner nor any of the candidates she beat out would be getting the award if an ESPN anchor had been diagnosed with cancer this year. I am impressed that Caitlyn beat out the dying kid for the award. It's hard to beat out a dying kid for any award that's based on sentiment. I'm sure the actress that plays her in a movie will be nominated for an Oscar. Same for Jenner, I guess.

As far as the backlash goes, the fact that it exists kind of makes the point, doesn't it, that it took a hell of a lot of courage to do what she did? I feel like Jenner's deep sin, as far as the disingenuous moralists are concerned, was not putting on a dress, but marrying into the Kardashian family.

Also, in respect to director Peter Berg's stupid comment comparing Jenner unfavorably to an Army veteran double amputee: It's kind of in bad form to bring military "courage" into the equation when transgender people are not permitted into the military.

posted by CM @ 10:25 AM