Janet Yellen Shames Congress For Austerity, Being Terrible

[UCmeNdc]

Yellen reminded lawmakers of their sheer terribleness during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Thursday about her nomination to replace Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve when his term ends in January. Republican senators moaned and groaned, as usual, about the Fed's extreme easy-money policies. Yellen reminded everybody that Congress has forced the Fed to act by constantly imposing harsh austerity measures on an economy still recovering from a financial crisis and deep recession.

snip.......


"Fiscal policy has been working at cross purposes to monetary policy," Yellen said. "Some of the near-term reductions in spending that we have seen have certainly detracted from the momentum of the economy and from demand, making it harder for the Fed to get the economy moving, making our task more difficult.

"We are worried about a fragile recovery, and a more supportive fiscal policy, or one that at least had less drag, that did no harm, would make life easier," she added later.

Yellen was referring to the austerity that has come out of a rolling series of debt crises instigated by Republicans in the past few years, including the deep budget cuts known as sequestration and this year's payroll-tax increase. Under pressure from Republicans, the federal government has cut spending at the fastest pace since the end of the Vietnam War. Government investment has tumbled to its lowest level as a percentage of GDP since 1948.

This belt-tightening has probably cost the economy nearly 2.5 million jobs, according to a recent study



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/janet-yellen-congress_n_4275572.html

[LuvNewcastle]

1. I think I like this lady. She's like a breath of fresh air in that position.

I'm glad the left shot down Summers and insisted on her appointment. She says that the problems we're having go back to the 1980's and policies that have led to such terrible income equality. Hmmm, I wonder what happened back in the 80's that started this long downhill slide we've been going down all this time. There's no doubt in my mind what place she's coming from. I hope she has that job for at least as long as fucking Greenspan was in there. She's got to undo all of the shit that evil bastard caused.

[Demeter]

3. Reagan broke the Labor Movement

and it's been downhill ever since for 99% of us, well, 90% anyway. THe other 9% will get the same treatment as soon as the rest of us are bled dry.

[Scuba]

2. Thank you Janet Yellen.

Spine. Love it.

[fasttense]

4. The banks and uber rich were screaming, crying and shaking in their boots

in 2008 when they collapsed the economy. They begged governments around the world to save them. Notice they didn't beg each other or private corporations to save them. They turned to the government they so malign to save their sorry asses. And governments around the world all bailed out their uber rich, corporations and banksters.

But instead of taxing the people who caused the crash, the same people who have been skating on paying their taxes, to pay for their bailouts, governments borrowed the money from.... Guess who they borrowed the money from? Why the only people who had the money the uber rich and banks. So, now banks, corporations and the uber rich were made whole AND they get interest on the money they lent for their own bailouts.

But this created a huge debt to be paid everywhere around the world. And who is paying the debt? Did the uber rich and corporations start paying more taxes? NO Siree. The only way the uber rich, corporations and banks can see to pay themselves back is by cutting out what governments pay on everything else. And magically, all around the world austerity is forced on everyone, except the bailed out, to pay for the bailouts. See, the less that governments pay out on things like roads, Social Security, medical care and food for the hungry, the more that governments have to pay back on the loans they took out from the uber rich to save the uber rich from their self inflicted crash.

See how you and I have to pay for the crash twice, a crash we did not cause. We have to pay off a huge debt that we never got to spend. You and I were NOT living high on the hog, running up bills we could not meet. The uber rich, corporations and bankster were running up bills they could not pay, living high on the hog, and they are still doing it. This is why there will be a 2nd crash.

There has been NO Recovery for the general economy. Only the very rich have recovered. The rest of us are saddled with paying back the huge debt run up to bailout the rich. And these very same people who caused the crash are right back at it again. Doing the same things they always did. The Obama administration is desperately trying to delay the 2nd crash, just like the bushes tried to delay the first crash, so your guess is as good as mine when the 2nd crash will come. But unless things change drastically, we are headed for a 2nd crash.

[Enthusiast]

5. That sounds great. But I will reserve judgment.

[Arneoker]

6. I don't know, she used a lot of big words in her testimony.

Are we sure that any the Republican Senators understood any of them, to say nothing about whether they got the point?

[loudsue]

7. That's exactly what I was wondering. Republicans are in the "don't get it" category anyway.

Big words and a shortage of porta potties just throws them for a loop.

[libdem4life]

8. Yellen and Warren ... two female economists ... not playing nice with the good ol' boys.

[JNelson6563]

9. The ladies are bringing the pain.

I like it.

Julie

[libdem4life]

10. Add to that ... it was ladies who put the government back together in their "committees"

rather quietly. This was worth a couple of news sentences, after the Pompous Ones shut it down to their Small Government and Reduced Spending Fanfare Crusade. Oh, and squandered a few billion dollars in the process...just because they could.