Texas Gov. Rick Perry has said it would be “almost treasonous.” Governments around the world haven’t been thrilled about it. And it’s not even clear if it even works. But the Federal Reserve has left the door wide open for further monetary easing – essentially printing billions and billions of more dollars to bailout the stubbornly sluggish economy.
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Every new effort by the Fed to shore up the economy is a tacit admission that the last efforts didn’t really work.
At least a few members of the Fed have come to the realization that the Fed may be out of bullets and can do little else at this point, besides promise to keep interest rates ridiculously low through 2013. And the politics of further bailouts have gotten, well, toxic.
The Fed’s unprecedented moves to prevent a banking system collapse in 2008 have been an interesting experiment in centrally planned economics. Supporters can’t really prove these efforts averted a Great Recession. They may have only delayed one, or sent the nation into a lost decade similar to Japan.
Maybe it’s time for the Fed to quit pumping up the stock market and the banks, and let free market forces do what they’re going to do, one way or the other. Maybe it’s time to realize it’s not the Fed’s job to keep juicing the economy. This, actually, is what got us into trouble in the first place.
