Mike Konczal at Rortybomb has a new post out: Richard Fischer Chernyshevsky ; Kocherlakota, the Scrivener, on the ways in which the tactics of inflation targeting from Richard Fisher imitate one of Lenin’s advisors:
Richard Fisher is a voting member on Federal Reserve monetary policy, and thus one of the crucial figures in determining how and when we come out of this recession. And he only cares about inflation, and doesn’t seem to put any weight on unemployment. He’s been dissenting since the beginning, even going so far as to believe that moneywas too tight in March 2008.
So what does he think now? Wall Street Journal:
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said the Fed’s recent moves are giving lawmakers an excuse to avoid making hard choices on fiscal policy, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
“The more we offer accommodative monetary policy, the less incentive they have to pull their socks up and do what’s right for the American people,” Fisher told the news service in an interview.
Shorter Richard Fisher, using the phrase Chernyshevsky is reputed to have come up with: “the worse the better.” The worse it gets for people, the better the opportunities for our ideology to be put into action. I never thought I’d have to go digging into the immediate influences of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to get a handle on how “independent” monetary policy works in the 21st century, but here we are.
I found it amusing to see the connection and the tactic of worse is better is for me one that is clear. If you have a political ideology that is in favor of the creditor class then the pain of the unemployed is totally not a part of your policy thinking.
This resonates with a large part of the Republican party right now as they applaud the likes of Herman Cain blaming the unemployed in the Republican debate on Wednesday October 18th. See video of Herman on Huffpost. Brad Delong decries (yet again) the Republican Mental Pathology.
This is what passes for debate in the Repuvlic these days.
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