The Limits Of Monetary Policy In Addressing Today's Economic Crisis
Via Atrios (not sure what he thinks about this), the WSJ writes about the Fed's ability to lower interest rates has been rather ineffective at spurring demand:
The U.S. recovery is hobbled by an economic divide that separates Americans not by income or wealth but by their access to credit. The housing bust left behind millions of people with credit records damaged by plunging home prices, lost jobs, past overspending or bad luck. Many are now walled off from the low interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve to spur the economy and remedy the aftereffects of the borrowing boom.
Shrunken access among credit have-nots is triggering more than personal plight. It has weakened the influence of the Fed—one of the best hopes for spurring stronger economic growth—and raised doubts within the central bank about whether it is doing much to reduce unemployment.
The credit divide factors into their thinking. Fed officials have been frustrated in the past year that low interest rate policies haven't reached enough Americans to spur stronger growth, the way economics textbooks say low rates should.
It never factored into the VSP's thinking about the housing and homeowner crisis. This is the failure of Tim Geithner especially, who blocked real help for homeowners while choosing to give free money to the banks.
The banks are fine now. The country is not.
Geithner remains a corrupt incompetent who, if Obama loses, will be the cause of the loss.
Speaking for me only
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