CNN, who I have been informed have only just recently become “centrists”, really want us to feel bad for rich, Republican ( which apparently didn’t stop the Democrat President from nominating him for a 2nd term ) Federal Reserve chair, Jay Powell, who had the “iron stomach” to provide “shock therapy” ( as if this writer is giggling ’hind their mouth while glancing @ Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine ), AKA suffering & destitution for others, while he takes no economic risks if he makes any mistakes, a perfect example o’ the US’s “meritocracy”, where only the lower classes have to accept the consequences for their actions — or for the actions o’ their superiors, as they get laid off for economic & business policies that they had nothing to do with:
Part of the reason Volcker is remembered so favorably by Powell and others is that it required a savvy mind and an iron stomach to a) understand the problem of rampant inflation, and b) implement the painful shock therapy of interest rate hikes that cost millions of people their jobs. Volcker’s plan worked, but it really sucked for a while. There was indeed some pain, to borrow Powell’s euphemistic phrasing.
Considering poverty rose in the 80s, I want to ask how Volcker’s plan ”worked”, but unlike CNN’s writers, I don’t need to pretend to be too stupid to understand what Volcker’s main goals were. One might wonder why the government would want to sabotage the economy for the many for the sake o’ keeping a tiny minority o’ rich people’s hoarded gold stacks still valuable & able to borrow money @ the cheap right before midterms, but we have to remember that Powell is a Republican, so the answer is probably that he wants to screw o’er Democrats. The better question is why Biden would nominate a Republican for a 2nd term ’stead o’, say, Janet Yellen, who led the US to have the lowest unemployment rate since 1970. The best answer is that Democrats are idiots ( specifically, it’s probably for the sake o’ “decorum” o’ following the long-held pattern o’ always giving Federal Reserve chairs 2 terms, which Trump broke when he only gave Yellen 1 term, as Republicans understand that having mo’ power is always better than following made-up rituals that only help the other side ).
“Volcker’s mantra, one he told me again and again through 2008-9, was that in a crisis the only asset you have is your credibility,” Austan Goolsbee, an economist who advised the Obama administration, wrote in 2019 just after Volcker died at age 92.
“¡The only thing that matters is that we keep the scam ’live!”.
But, wait, we have a bonus bit from CNN:
Congrats, rich people — you ranks are multiplying. Thanks to gains in the stock market and soaring home prices, the world got another 5.2 million millionaires last year, nearly half of whom are in the United States. It’s the largest increase in millionaire numbers for any country in any year this century, according to Credit Suisse, which published its annual global wealth report this week.
Well, it’s good to see we have some good news in this dire economy for on —
Meanwhile, the pandemic has pushed about 100 million people into extreme poverty, raising that global total to 711 million in 2021, according to the World Bank.
O… Right… & there’s ’bout 20 times as many people now in destitution. But “congrats”, I guess. Thank the Invisible Hand for that stock market that, nonetheless, is still not high ’nough, so we need to raise those rates & throw some mo’ people out onto the street. A real human being with any semblance o’ empathy would put the massive increase o’ poverty @ the top & be much mo’ morose, but as we’ve established time & time ’gain, US news organizations aren’t staffed by humans, but by sheltered sociopaths.
