One Fed President Has Keen Sense of the Obvious

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said inflation may rise at a rate much higher than the central bankers’ desired range. He notes that the Federal Reserve only has one tool in their control to fight inflation – increased interest rates.

“The economy may be at greater risk of inflation than the conventional wisdom indicates,” Plosser said May 21. However, Plosser cautioned that “the economy is probably not strong enough and not ready for increasing” interest rates.

Charles Plosser has indeed identified the Catch 22 in the liberal’s method to address a down economy by spending far more than budgets allow. Printing money we don’t have devalues the dollar, which means more dollars will be required to purchase the same item (inflation). Meanwhile, in a down economy with high unemployment, household disposable income drops, lowering a family’s standard of living as they have fewer dollars to spend on more expensive goods. As a result, the households tend to cut back on spending money on non-essentials, which worsens the economy as a whole. It becomes a death spiral such as we saw during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

But Charles Plosser also knows that the Obama administration plans to continue to overspend as no two presidents combined have ever overspent before. This will be a further inflationary pressure. Add to this the economic disaster that would be the twin Statist plans of Obamacare and the Obama/Waxman/Markey Mandate, Cap, and Tax bill, and we have a perfect storm of negative economic actions.

There is no way to sugar-coat the economic results of the Obama plan. They are as foreseeable and predictable as the moon and the tides. As night follows day, economic disaster follows Obama’s Statism.