The Wonk Monkey doesn’t think anyone has done a better job reporting on the economy than the NPR Money Team and this time they have one-upped themselves. They have taken the Feds recent statement about creating $600 Billion out of thin air and then converted it into English. The Wonk Monkey was not scared until he read the translation.
If you wish to see the full text and use NPR’s tool to convert it feel free to go here.
The monkey has placed the full converted text below:
The economy still sucks.People are spending a little bit more, but they're stretched thin: One in 10 workers can't find a job, wages are basically flat, home prices are way down and nobody can get a loan.Companies are buying more stuff, for now, but they're not building new factories or offices.Nobody's hiring.Nobody's building.Inflation has gone from low to super low.
The Fed has two main jobs: Keep unemployment low and prices stable.At the moment, as you may have heard, unemployment is really high. And inflation is so low that it's making us nervous.We keep saying that unemployment's going to fall. And it keeps not falling.
So to give the economy a kick in the ass—and to pump up inflation a little bit—we decided to go on a shopping spree.First of all, we're going to keep buying new stuff when our old investments pay off.Second—and this is the big news for today—we're going to create $600 billion out of thin air and use it over the next eight months to buy bonds from the federal government. We hope this will make interest rates go so low that people will borrow and spend more money, and companies will start hiring.By the way, this is an experiment, and we don't really know how it's going to work out. We reserve the right to change our plans at any time.
Of course, we'll continue our policy of letting banks borrow money for free. If you're worried this is going increase inflation and destroy the dollar, please reread everything we've said to this point. We plan to keep rates near zero for as long as it takes, but we won't tell you how long that is.In the meantime, we'll keep an eye on things.
Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; James Bullard; Elizabeth A. Duke; Sandra Pianalto; Eric S. Rosengren; Daniel K. Tarullo; and Kevin M. Warsh. Voting against the policy was Thomas M. Hoenig. He's the president of the Kansas City Fed, and he's voted against Fed policy at every one of our meetings this year.He thinks this whole creating-$600-billion-out-of-thin-air thing is going to do more harm than good.He also thinks that all this money we've pumped into the economy could inflate another bubble and create widespread worries about inflation. That could lead us right into another crisis.
NPR has an interesting article on the cat-and-mouse 'game' of the US vs. Al-Qaida
No, Illegal Immigrants didn't try to vote
Keith Olberman, suspended? Shocking, the Monkey thought that MSNBC was trying to become partisan like Fox (see later article). If they were like Fox, they would have given him a raise and a banana. (The Monkey thinks getting paid in Bananas would be great.)
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