This segment of What’s Ahead examines a pernicious idea that has a vise-like grip on Federal Reserve policy and is widely accepted among economists and policymakers.
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The notion is that the economy is similar to a machine that can be guided, such as an automobile. Hence, the Fed-speak of an economy “overheating” or needing stimulus because it’s not growing fast enough.
The belief that a handful of people in Washington can constructively drive the activities of millions of people making billions of buy-and-sell decisions each day is beyond preposterous. The Fed is now trying to engineer a slowdown because of its belief that too much economic activity causes inflation. Creating too much money that undermines the value of the dollar is the real cause.
This coming Fed-engineered recession is unnecessary.
From the late 1980s through the late 1990s, the Fed focused on the integrity of the dollar. It should do so again.
