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A New Fed?

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The annual Jackson Hole conference of the Federal Reserve starts today! If you’re a little under-enthusiastic, it’s OK. There’s a lot going on, what with the State Fair, back to school preparations, and the fact that hardly anyone cares what the Fed is up to.

Except, that is, more people all the time. The mysterious workings of the Fed have come under a lot of scrutiny lately – from left, right, and center. The most powerful bank in the world does indeed control more of our destiny than many otherwise free people would like, and that’s worrying.

The Fed knows this, of course. They also know that in an era of dysfunctional government and globalism they have more power all the time – as well as more responsibility to get it right. Will there be a new, more open Fed?  The answer, a very strong “Yes!” may surprise you.

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Productivity Down – Blame the Kids?

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The decline in productivity, first noted 15 months ago, is starting to become a serious issue. It is true that an increase in GDP is most likely and most sustainable when the output for every worker constantly goes up. But over the last year, we’ve had a sustained drop of 0.4% annualized.

The message is starting to creep into popular media. A scapegoat now has to be found, lest our politics actually focus on something real and useful. The blame for this decline now falls on smartphones – especially in the hands of those slacker Millenials.

Those kids! They just won’t get off our lawn. Or put down their phones and start mowing it, something like that. We’re never sure. What we do know is that rather than discuss economic trends we now have someone to blame so we can divert our attention from reality. This is just in time for the problem to solve itself.

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Is Objectivity Dead?

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Once you let the monster out of its cage, how do you get it back in?

This may well be the question haunting serious journalists through and after this election. The gold standard of a reliable news media, objectivity, is at the very least being seriously tested. It may even be completely gone – replaced with instant fact-checking and even personal animosity directly primarily at Donald Trump.

It’s not as though his combative and free-flowing BS style doesn’t deserve a hard-hitting dose of reality at every turn. Democrats, like me, practically demand reporting like this. But we have to ask ourselves, “Is journalism as we know it dead, or simply doing what it has to for us to get through this election?”

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Defeating ISIS

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In a crazy election year, it should come as no surprise that there is another turn waiting to be sprung on everyone. The biggest “October Surprise” in the works right now is the defeat of ISIS / Da’ish. This is quite likely to happen, and it would be a huge boost for Obama and Democrats everywhere.

The story, of course, isn’t about us – but we’ll make it that way. Our media will almost certainly portray the collapse as something the Obama administration gets all the credit for. Not only will that not be entirely true, it will also be reported very badly by the media leading up to the “final” event.

This is a complex story that requires a lot of context, which is exactly what the US media is terrible at. But even more than predicting tomorrow’s news today, Barataria is all about context. Here is what to look for if you wish to follow this story as it unfolds.

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Facts or Feelings?

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Left or right? Democratic or Republican? Progressive or Conservative? These are the choices we supposedly make as we consider our political philosophy – our outlook on the nation and how we vote. It’s one end or the other, with a fair amount of room in the middle for those who see room for both.

But that doesn’t seem to be what divides us politically anymore. The sharpest division seems to run between something like optimism and pessimism, either staying the course with a few tweaks or smashing the system to give room for something totally new to come along. Yet even that doesn’t seem to describe it.

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