I wrote thus, on 22 March 2009, my first post:
Failure is not success. In the context of a Federal government stimulus program, success means there are more wage earners earning more than they did before the stimulus. Success is *not* simply a rise in GDP/GNP; we had that during the Bush years, and we find ourselves in a bit of a mess, since the most of that growth went to a small fraction of the population. It can be argued, and I certainly would, that the Bush approach to economics is a cause of the current mess, although the approach was not original with him; he didn't have one original thought.
Ben Bernanke has left his hidey hole, and, more or less, fesses up that I was right. He also asserts that it doesn't matter. He asserts that fiscal policy should be used. He elides the salient fact: Obambi was forced to put the burden on the Fed since the right wingnuts wouldn't allow significant fiscal policy to deal with the problem. That's the last thing they want. A full blown terminal depression is so 19th century.
From the article, not a Ben quote to be clear:
The stock market has soared, and investors have prospered, even as wage growth has stagnated. Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor, has memorably described the Fed's current role as a "reverse Robin Hood", rewarding the rich at the expense of the poor.
As to unemployment: yes, the calculated number is very much lower. But... the labor force participation rate (the denominator used to make the percent) is down nearly 5 percentage points since 2000. And much of the jobs (here) are hamburger flippers and banksters. Not that we need more of either.
As a Keynesian, Ben cannot avoid the fact of demand driven growth. There isn't, and never has been, supply driven growth. Just look at the petro sector.
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