Jeff, I wish you weren't but you're very wrong (and needlessly insulting).
By the end of the month, the Federal Reserve will complete its second round of quantitative easing—often referred to as QE2—in which it's buying $600 billion worth of treasury bonds to push interest rates lower and kick-start the economy. The bond-buying program has come under fire from critics who say it has inflated the value of the stock market as well as commodities prices across the board—including the price of gas, which is still nearly a dollar higher than it was a year ago. At the same time, the economy has hit what economists call a "soft patch" following a number of weaker-than-expected economic reports, including a double-dip in home prices.
Now the economy is faced with what could be its biggest challenge yet: surviving without the Fed's stimulus.
We have seen over a trillion in Keynesian stimulus spending, record shattering deficits, easy money, bank bailouts, mortgage bailouts, low interest rates, even fake, Keynesian, “tax cuts” (based on tax credits rather than reduced rates).
Yet, at no point in the last 70 years, going back to the Great Depression, has the American economy suffered unemployment this high for this long, or such extended stagnation without a rebound or recovery. The American economy does not lie flat on its back for years and years like this, except during the Depression. Even in the 1970s era, the economy persistently rebounded after four worsening recession cycles.
President Obama and the Democrats persist in their discredited and outdated theory that economic growth is created by increased government spending and deficits. If that were true, the American economy would be enjoying its greatest boom in history right now, with a 28% increase in federal spending and more than $4 trillion in deficits since 2008.
Maybe you don't go to the grocery store, buy gas or have friends out of work so you are insulated from the world around you.
