Real and effective “anti-establishment” ideas come from unexpected places. That is, they are unexpected if you read only the dominant media and its insider sources, or follow politics only during the quadrennial presidential farce.
Quite a few news junkies would be surprised at David Stockman’s critique of current Federal Reserve behavior and policy, for example. In “Why Ronald Reagan Is Rolling In His Grave: The Keynesian Putsch At The Fed,” he charges the central bank with having managed “an economic coup d’etat” by engaging in an ongoing wealth redistribution scam — shoveling wealth to the rich.
Stockman sees the confidence of Fed Chair Yellen’s macro-policy micromanagement agenda as a scary case of hubris, of self-appointed effrontery. “Yellen & Co believe they are in charge of virtually everything on the main street economy . . . based on nothing more than their own subjective and unexplained wisdom.”
Stockman is in high form, here. Yellen’s latest pronouncement, he says, is “unaltered Keynesian claptrap. It is the arrogant over-reach of a model-obsessed academic zealot who has no respect whatsoever for the real main street economy and for the historically proven truth that free markets are the best route to prosperity and higher living standards for the people. . . .”
Her policies, he claims, amount to “‘trickle down’ economics with malice of forethought.”
Does that sound Bernie Sanderish to you? It shouldn’t.
The case for limited government and against the Fed (and federal government management in general) are that it is modern unlimited government that serves the few at the expense of the many. Stockman is just restating very old wisdom.
Remind your Occupier friends of this. They are on the wrong team.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
