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The Honorable Mr. Powell
Jerome Powell will head to Capitol Hill this week, where he'll be interrogated by a group of people whose approval rating has averaged 20% for the better part of two decades, according to Gallup.
Not that Powell's an especially popular guy either. He owns the worst approval rating of any Fed chair in the (relatively short) history of Gallup's polling, and not necessarily because inflation is too high. That's part of it, but the real problem is America's obsession with grievance politics, parano
“A curious pheasant.” Seems like something out of a Monty Python skit. Does Chair Powell have Cleese or Idle on speed dial? The funny or sad thing is that only a handful of people on the committee would get it. Thanks for the laugh today.
Channeling Tina Fey’s SNL’s Sarah Palin could be helpful as well for JP…
Sure, that meeting on the Hill is going to be unproductive. But, like, what would a productive committee meeting look like?
There’s no real mystery to our economic situation (except, maybe, for the strength of the labor market and the stubbornness of the American consumer to keep spending, come hell or high water). The solutions are similarly pretty obvious (raise taxes, notably on ‘excessively’ high profit margins and/or on consumption) but they are outside the Overton windows.
So yeah. Not sure what would count as ‘productive discussion’ here.
Fred, you can raise taxes on the hamsters, but not the donor classes of either party. Of course passing such a thing is an investment in rage capital, and as such makes the Overton window smaller than one on a dollhouse. The cycle does need to break and you are right that the solution doesn’t have Chair Powell peppered with questions from people who offer little in the way of solutions.
Ironically, the people who will be questioning Chair Powell are part of the group spending $1.5T more than they collect in taxes- which is very likely a significant part of the inflation problem- but who is questioning them?
Goes without saying that I agree with you both.
but you got to admit that Murdoch is playing on easy mode. Rile people up about taxes (including taxes on the rich). How easy is that? Very. Even progressives don’t enjoy paying taxes. We have to reason it’s for the greater good. Then, once the rich tax rates is way down and the state capacity is atrophied, keep riling people up about culture wars and the state inefficiency, using all that rage generated by a deeply inequal and unjust society…
Fuck. I wish I too had a way to monetize that doom loop.