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Audit the Fed?

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This is not an ordinary election year in many ways. For one, it’s not really an election year – the actual voting doesn’t happen until 2016. It’s also going to be the first Presidential election without Obama since 2004 as the White House becomes open.

But more importantly, everyone seems to understand that the economy and the politics of this nation are both changing. Stuff is seriously up for grabs.  A desperate cry for attention might make all the difference.

Enter into this a bid for more Congressional oversight of the Federal Reserve, an idea backed by no less than 30 Senators, 3 of which are clearly running for President. It seems like a good idea all around – what can be wrong with more oversight? That depends on what’s being overlooked now, of course, and what can be done with existing law.

Plus, of course, we have the omnipresent Fed itself. Does it need to be reigned in?

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A Tale of Two Classes

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The stock market is tanking. It has to bode poorly for the economy, yes?

If we’ve learned one thing over the past six years, it’s that what is good for investors is not necessarily good for workers – and vice versa. As Herman Miller, an accountant friend of the family told me as a child, “Never forget that the stock market is only a market for stocks.”

So what is the future for stocks? In the short term, not good. For workers? That may be a better story. And if the fortunes of these two classes cross each other it’ll be the story of this year as the ups and downs and devilish details read something like a novel.

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Bibi Comes to Washington

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Why is foreign policy so difficult? If you were to ask Tip O’Neill, he’d tell you that “All politics is local,” a phrase he credited to his Dad. Take that mindset and set it loose in an integrated world and pretty soon you have nations talking right past each other with no hope of ever finding common ground.

That’s what brings Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to Washington on 3 March to speak to a joint session of Congress – but not President Obama. It’s also what makes it very likely that this will be an epic disaster for at least some of the parties arranging this trip.

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Why Economics?

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For all the thousands of words forming complex observations, theories, and predictions it takes a really simple question to stump Barataria. Buried within just the right blank stare of a few words is often hidden some basic wisdom that questions the assumptions long taken as unprovable facts. Isn’t the Emperor naked after all? Such a question came in response to a recent post, as posed by “kikila”:

Finally (I hope) someone who can explain why the economy is important to me!

It’s less of a question than a question about the fundamental underpinnings of our world. Why does economics matter? He elaborates, “I have a theory that this is intrinsically linked to ideology and the false concept that a free economy = freedom (the mainstay of the neo-liberal line for decades). Moreover, that ideological systems have coopted the notion of democracy, linking the idea of political involvement directly and indelibly with the idea that one day, eventually (you say 2017) the economy will begin to benefit (the) people.”

More like centuries of not-so-neo liberal thought, but let’s dig in. Why should we care?

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Boehner’s Big Wave – Goodbye?

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In most of the world, the one thing we can be sure of is constant change. In the US House, we have come to rely on inaction in the face of change as Speaker Boehner stood resolutely in charge of a body too fractured to do anything. As comedian Dave Allen observed, “When you’re up to your bottom lip in muck, there is only one rule – don’t make waves.”

A big wave is about to come through the US House as Boehner faces a serious challenge from the Tea Party wing of the party. So far, two Representatives, Louis Gohmert (R-TX) and Ted Yoho (R-FL) have announced they are challenging him. How exactly it will shake out is anyone’s guess, but something is about to happen. Make popcorn.

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