[lbo-talk] [Pen-l] From the WSJ: Federal Reserve 'Doves' Beat 'Hawks' in Economic Prognosticating

Marv Gandall marvgand2 at gmail.com
Mon Jul 29 12:45:35 PDT 2013


On 2013-07-29, at 12:49 PM, Robert Naiman wrote:


> On the same theme:
>
> Wall Street Overwhelmingly Favors Yellen Over Summers For Fed Chair: CNBC Poll
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/wall-street-yellen-summers-fed-poll_n_3659823.html

So I'll return to the question I posed a couple of days ago: Is there really enough of a difference between Yellen and Summers to justify the liberals' full court press on this issue? Yellen can't be of equal comfort to both Wall Street and liberal Democrats who want to curb its influence. Someone is experiencing a serious bout of false consciousness here. Until persuaded otherwise, I'll stick to my view that the antagonism directed at Summers is mostly personal all round or based on unsupported speculation that he is more disposed to tighten than Yellen. There's no indication that either Yellen or Summers or another appointee will represent any meaningful departure from the Bernanke Fed. Its policy direction will continue to be decided, as Harold MacMillan once explained in another context, by "events, dear boy, events."


> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> (The WSJ ran the story below on its front page, which is stark contradiction to its editorial line and that of conservative Republicans who are strongly opposed to the Fed's policy of quantitative easing. It vindicates the Keynesians who suggested monetary easing would not lead to inflation in a slack economy with high unemployment, and is a repudiation of the nostrums peddled by the monetarist followers of Milton Friedman. The irony is that the Journal's most loyal Wall Street readers, whatever their ideological predilections, have benefited most from the Fed's robust asset purchases since the near-collapse of the financial system in 2008, and any hint of a Fed retreat has caused their stock and bond portfolios to plummet. The Journal article lends support to those economists and investors who have been warning against any tapering off of Fed bond purchases, especially those who see monetary policy as a more palatable alternative to fiscal spending. It will also lend support, intentionally or otherwise, to Janet Yellen's candidacy for the Fed chair. If the Obama administration is looking for right-wing cover to appoint Yellen ahead of Larry Summers, which its liberal base has been demanding, the WSJ has just provided it.)
>
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