The Fed, Policy, and Political Interference

The Wall Street Journal, in a piece about the relationship between Federal Reserve President Jerome Powell and President Donald Trump, had a question:

Who should shoulder the blame for a slowing US economy: President Trump? Or Fed chief Jerome Powell?

The question presents a false choice. Neither is to blame because there is no “blame” to be had. Economic cycles (“cycle” is a loose term in economics; it implies a temporal regularity that doesn’t exist) come and go on market forces, especially in a reasonably free market economy.

The Fed, though, should stop chasing the market and simply set its rates at levels consistent with a 2% inflation rate, the Fed’s stated target rate; then it should sit quietly.

As to the Fed’s political independence, that depends on how timid its President and BoG are. Such interference is very difficult to achieve: firing can only be done for cause, which is a high bar. Impeachment and conviction take both houses of Congress and a supermajority in one.

Of course, Fed moves can be countered or potentiated through Congress’ or a President’s fiscal moves, but those don’t politically interfere within the meaning of this article.

Recession in the Offing?

The Nervous Nellies on The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board think so.  After all, the stock market had its roughest down day in some years on Wednesday.

The horrors that surely would be associated with this recession:

A Chinese recession would mean a European recession, which would send US growth down too.

Some wars must be fought, though; one such is the economic war the PRC has been waging against us, and the West generally, for years. The current trade dispute is just one aspect of that.

And

…drive China, the world’s second largest economy, into its first recession since Deng Xiaoping began the era of pro-market economic reform.

Certainly unfortunate for the mainland Chinese people, and there’ll be pain for us—but what war is bloodless, other than those in the imaginations of pressmen? A likely outcome, though, would be the weaning of the US and Europe off of its dependence on the PRC for trade, a separation of us from the bandits.

And the indicators predicting this recession:

The market had a terrible day. Market volatility is a harbinger of recession.  Unfortunately for the narrative, the market is not the economy. The two are tied together as the one is driven by the other.  But the tie has a lot of slack in it, and what the economy does does not inherently impact the markets immediately.  The lag is months long, not hours or even days.  The markets do not at all drive the economy.  As well push a wet string across sandpaper.

Another indicator the WSJ has touted this week is the yield curve indicated by the 2- and 10-year Federal Treasury Notes. It inverted this week for a brief time.  However, the lag between such an inversion (if repeated in a short time one or more times) and an actual recession is in the region of 22 months.  If this indicator is followed by a recession in those 22 months the time frame would coincide with a record-long economic growth period, one whose age and hoariness already would seem to spring load us for recession.  If we measure economic growth from when it really got started instead of from the beginning of the historically slow and anemic Obama “recovery,” this growth period after these subsequent 22-ish months would only be middle-aged.

There’s a confounding factor with the yield curve, though.  For the last several years, the Federal Reserve Bank has been artificially manipulating interest rates.  The yield curve, more and more over these years, reflects market forces/economic imperatives less and Fed moves more.  Its value as an economic predictor is commensurately reduced.

Chicken Little lives.

Pawns

Charles Hurt was unimpressed—as have been many of us—with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s (D, MI) political posturing at the expense of her grandmother.

Who uses their aging grandmother as a pawn to make a political point in what is really kind of a stupid political kerfuffle to begin with?
There’s something really wrong with someone that does that….

This is what Progressive-Democrats do, though. They see real, live people merely as tools to be used for Party or their own benefit.  These aren’t human beings in Progressive-Democrat eyes..

Progressive-Democrats only offer Blacks empty promises of benefits to come, with no interest or action in delivering exits from those welfare cages.  Blacks are nothing more than crops of votes to be harvested.

Progressive-Democrats only offer Hispanics empty rhetoric regarding immigration and routes to citizenship.  Here, too, they take no action other than to obstruct others’ efforts regarding immigration and asylum laws and legal immigration.  Hispanics are nothing more than crops of votes to be harvested.

Here, now, is Grandma, also reduced to a mechanical tool, this one to be used to carve a tablet holding a personal political agenda aimed at personal gain.  That her sity appears to be a willing participant in a shameful charade in no way lessens the depth of Tlaib’s depravity.

The Philadelphia Shooting

The shooting in Philadelphia Wednesday in which six cops were shot while trying to serve a drug crime-related warrant illustrates a couple of things.

One is the naked gun-control politicization of any event involving firearms inflicted on us by Progressive-Democrat politicians. This is illustrated by Party Presidential candidate and Senator Kamala Harris (D, CA) going on television just an hour into this day-into-nighttime event—an hour!—to push for gun controls because this guy was using a gun.  Never mind that she knew nothing about the event as it unfolded, here was a chance to make personally beneficial political hay, and Harris jumped on it with both feet.

The Philadelphia Mayor, Jim Kenney (D), also is all over television demanding more gun control laws.

The other thing demonstrates just how deep and slimy is the cesspool into which Harris jumped with both her feet, and how foolish the Philadelphia mayor looks with his virtue signalling.

The perp here had his guns illegally. Nor was he barred from legally possessing guns because of any old felony.  His were all gun-related.

His first arrest when he was 18 years old was in 2001 for having a gun with an altered serial number, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
[He] has been arrested around a dozen times since he was 18, including being convicted six times on charges that involved illegal possession of guns, drug dealing, and aggravated assault.

Gun control laws don’t work.

Progressive-Democrats just want use them to pander and virtue signal while along the way disarming the rest of us.

And a bonus third thing: police actually are at great pains to take folks alive,

A US Attorney’s Statement

In the aftermath of the Philadelphia shooting, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania William M McSwain issued this statement:

Statement by United States Attorney William M. McSwain on the Shooting of Six Philadelphia Police Officers
What I witnessed last night was true heroism by the Philadelphia police.  But the crisis was precipitated by a stunning disrespect for law enforcement—a disrespect so flagrant and so reckless that the suspect immediately opened fire on every single officer within shooting distance.  Only by the grace of God did they survive.
Where does such disrespect come from?
There is a new culture of disrespect for law enforcement in this City that is promoted and championed by District Attorney Larry Krasner—and I am fed up with it.
It started with chants at the DA’s victory party—chants of “F*** the police” and “No good cops in a racist system.”
We’ve now endured over a year and a half of the worst kinds of slander against law enforcement—the DA routinely calls police and prosecutors corrupt and racist, even “war criminals” that he compares to Nazis.
This vile rhetoric puts our police in danger.  It disgraces the Office of the District Attorney.  And it harms the good people in the City of Philadelphia and rewards the wicked.
The alleged shooter last night, Maurice Hill, is a previously convicted felon with a long rap sheet.  We have plenty of criminal laws in this City—but what we don’t have is robust enforcement by the District Attorney.  Instead, among other things, we have diversionary programs for gun offenses, the routine downgrading of charges for violent crime, and entire sections of the criminal code that are ignored.
The criminal laws in this City—and especially the existing gun laws and drug laws—should be aggressively enforced in order to protect the public and the police.  My Office is doing all that we can.  We have prosecuted 70% more violent crime cases this year than we did last year, in response to the District Attorney’s lawlessness.  But it is now time for the District Attorney and his enablers to stop making excuses for criminals.  It is time for accountability.  It is time to support law enforcement and to put the good people of this City first.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office, in conjunction with the Philadelphia police and our federal partners, is investigating the horrible events of last night and we are considering all options at our disposal.  We will do everything that we can to support our brothers and sisters in the Philadelphia Police Department and ensure justice is done.
To the officers involved last night—those who were wounded and those who rushed to defend them—and to their families, I say thank you.  The whole City thanks you.  We owe you more than we can ever repay.

What he said.