WaPo's O'Brien: Fed Shouldn't Have Ended QE

by JASmius



Why, Matt?  Did Janet Yellen wring that emergency toner appropriation into the House Continuing Resolution after all?:

Most economists agree that the Federal Reserve did the right thing in announcing an end to quantitative easing (QE) Wednesday.

Some think the Fed should have acted sooner, but very few think the central bank should continue its bond purchases. Washington Post blogger Matt O'Brien is one of them.

Is it because the dollar still has value left?  Double-ply bathroom tissue versus the single-ply of pretty much every other Western currency at this point, which is the only factor generating the illusion of the dollar's purported "strength"?

"The fact that it's ending QE3 despite still-low inflation and still-high, though declining, unemployment, signals that the Fed is eager to return to normalcy," he writes.

He thinks "still-low inflation" is a bad thing, folks.  Which tells me he doesn't do his own grocery shopping or pay his own electricity bill.

And pal, unemployment is many things, but it isn't "declining" anywhere outside Red Barry's etch-o-sketch.

"The Fed, in short, looks much more hawkish. And that's not good, because, as Chicago Fed President Charles Evans explains, the 'biggest risk' to the economy right now is that the Fed raises rates too soon."

Biggest risk to the Democrat Party, maybe.  That way the electorate would see how crummy the Obamaconomy really is by throwing Wall Street into the same sinking ship out of which Main Street has been frantically bailing seawater for the past six years.  The solution of Messrs. O'Brien and Evans to which would evidently be to drill more holes in the bottom of the ship to allow the water to run out on its own.

QE is no magic bullet, but it's quite effective, O'Brien says. "Especially at convincing markets that the Fed won't raise rates for a while, which is all it should be saying right now, because the only thing worse than having to do QE is having to do QE again."

Three times isn't enough, Matt?  Have you applied this logic to your sex life?

In other words, he adds, the Fed "should do everything it can to make sure the economy lifts off from its zero interest rate trap before it pulls anything back."

You mean like this, Matt?



Remind me never to retain you as my travel agent.