The Most Important Economic Story Nobody Is Talking About
The Atlantic | May 3
By failing to appoint new members to the Federal Reserve, Obama has failed the economy…. Behind every great central banker stands a great central banking committee. Or at least a pliant one. It’s this latter reality that President Obama still has not quite recognized. And this malign neglect of most matters monetary has added a wholly unnecessary degree-of-difficulty to the economic recovery…. As Greg Ip of The Economist has pointed out, most of Bernanke’s colleagues now want to raise rates before he does. He increasingly looks isolated…. It’s worth remembering that even the hawks project inflation to remain below target and unemployment to remain above target for the next few years. If the Fed believes its own forecasts, it should be doing more…. There are two unfilled seats on the FOMC. President Obama’s picks for those positions have been among the victims of the endless Republican obstruction in the world’s greatest deliberative body. There’s a simple solution. Obama could just bypass the Senate with recess appointments. That’s what he did for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Why not do the same for the Federal Reserve (or the Federal Housing Finance Agency)?