I have been trying to figure out why so many people (including myself) have been so negative about the direction of the economy so I have been playing around with some data published by various governmental sources, primarily the Bureau of Economic Analysis tables and Federal Reserve Z.1 from December 2007. I created a few graphs because I believe a picture says a thousand words and I wouldn’t expect anyone to read so many of my words. So, here goes.
The first chart I think really lays it out. This is Consumer Debt plus Mortgage Debt as a percent of Personal Income. I also charted Personal Disposable Income and it looks the same except the percentages are a little higher. This ratio has increased from 51% in 1974 to 112% in 2006 and an estimated 111% in 2007. So the good times for consumers over the past three decades appears to have been funded through incremental relative debt burden as opposed to income gains. This is simply another way of saying that we have been spending more than we are producing (unless we are borrowing to save, but keep reading), and perhaps we are close to hitting the proverbial wall.
The second graph titled Debt to GDP breaks out some components of debt as a percent of Gross Domestic Product. Note the sharp rise here too. One reason this is so steep is because I have added the National debt to the mix. This does not include State and Local debt, but believe it or not as a percent of GDP those items are relatively unremarkable. Business debt to GDP has also increased, but not at an alarming rate. It averaged 60% over the 1974-2007 time period and is currently high at 69.5%, the highest point in the time series. This is not a net number so it does not take into account cash that businesses have, so if businesses are flush with cash the higher number could be meaningless.
The graph titled Percent Change in GDP Components illustrates the makeup of GDP over this time period. The reason I like this graph is because it gives you an idea what is driving the economy; business investment, personal spending, or residential real estate. What I would like to point out here is the surprising suggestion that business investment is not what has driven the economy since the Bush tax cuts. In fact, with the exception of one spike in 1984, business investment doesn’t look very strong during the Reagan and Bush I presidencies either. I find it hard to see in this data support for the idea that tax cuts on high incomes lead to business investment raising all boats (you know, the trickle down theory). What, then, has been driving growth in this decade? We know from our Debt to GDP graph that mortgage debt increased dramatically over this period in both absolute and relative terms. Is it consumers borrowing against real property and spending that has fueled the economy? Add that to the fiscal stimulus of continuing budget deficits and maybe that’s the answer. To put this into perspective, take a look at the final graph, Personal Consumption and Business Investment. These amounts are in nominal dollar amounts. As the graph illustrates, we have been increasing our consumption at a much faster rate than business investment, and it appears this is what has fueled our economic growth. Borrow and spend, at the personal and federal government level. And this is why, I believe, there is so much bad feeling out there. Unfortunately it may be justified.
So where do we go from here? Well, if we have a major economic downturn we could go through an extended period of hardship as debts are written off and asset values decline. This is one school of thought – that we are headed for a period of deflation (not just disinflation but actual falling prices and values). On the other side is inflation. If you owe a lot of money, inflation is good for you because as overall prices and wages rise, the debt you owe becomes a smaller and smaller amount in real terms. So we could inflate our way out of this by flooding the system with money – but this creates more debt. Ah, and therein lies the problem. How much debt will it take to inflate our way out of debt? Looking at the Debt to GDP graph I am not feeling very good about this approach.
I want to go back here to the economic policies of the past 27 years, since we began the reduction in marginal tax rates. I don’t have the numbers yet to support this so consider it an unsupported hypothesis for now. If I find some time I will look for the numbers, if they are even available, to try and support this. What if, instead of tax cuts that benefit the wealthy resulting in business investment the tax cuts actually resulted in cheap available consumer credit? Lets take an example. Person A makes a very good living, say $2 million a year. Person A gets a tax cut and finds they have an extra $100,000 at year-end. What happens to that 100,000? Perhaps some gets spent, and that could account for some of the increase in personal consumption. But what if a large portion of it goes to a hedge fund for investment? Perhaps much of it flows into safe investments such as CDs and money market funds. What is the impact of the additional savings? The result would be an increase in the supply of funds available and, if our Eco 101 is working, a decrease in the cost of capital. If business does not use this capital to invest, it will find its way into some use because sitting idle it makes no return at all. We can speculate where this money may have ended up, and I speculate that over the past few years it ended up in places that include exposure to subprime mortgages and other consumer debt funded through securitization and commercial paper. If this is correct, then tax cuts to the wealthy do not in fact trickle down to the rest of the population through employment and income. Rather, they trickle down through debt, leaving the wealthy to accumulate more wealth and many of the not-so-wealthy wondering how they will make their next credit card payment.
The cost in revenue to the Federal Government of the Bush tax cuts is estimated to be approximately $1.7 trillion through 2011. This begs the question: what if those tax cuts went to the middle and lower income taxpayers who would be more likely to have spent it rather than invest it. On average, that would be like getting the current stimulus plan being rammed through Congress every year for ten years. Would Greenspan have felt it necessary to keep interest rates as low as he did after the 2001 recession? Would the economy have rebounded faster? Would we have had the real estate bubble without the historically low interest rates? We will never know the answers to these questions, but I think they are well worth asking.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Income, Debt, Taxes, and The Economy
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9 comments:
There's a lot of material here, but the conclusion is incorrect. Especially with regards to Tax Policy.
I would like to reiterate a point that I can never convince you - that all the problems you mentioned in your post is not solely the result of the policies of the President, its the Federal Reserve. Hear me out.
You state that "Person A gets a tax cut and finds they have an extra $100,000 at year-end. What happens to that 100,000? .... Perhaps much of it flows into safe investments such as CDs.."
Here's the problem. In a free market system when people have more money and they'd deposit in the bank, more credit becomes available. As more credit becomes available, credit should essentially become cheaper. Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve meddles with interest rates and sets unnaturally high or low interest rates.
When Congress increases taxes on the wealthy, where does that money go? Under Bush, since the Government couldn't collect enough taxes to subsidize expenditures, they've opted to print it. They do this buy borrowing from a private bank - the Federal Reserve, and they instantly create the cash to spend. Under Clinton, for example, taxes on the wealthy were higher. As a result, in order to thwart giving the IRS more money than they need to - wealthy individuals borrow like crazy (aka "Business Investment"). They take advantage of artificially low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve - the debt is subsidized and they can deduct the interest from their taxes. The assets appreciate faster than the interest rate.
Can you explain why Tax collections went up even under Bush's tax cut plan? In 1999 total tax collections were 1.7 Trillion, 2006 its 2.2 Trillion. Wheres that money you wanted to give to the poor and middle class? They'll be actually less of it.
The last thing we need is an expansion of entitlements. Giving money to poor and middle class for doing nothing is tantamount to Socialism. But then again, so is our Federal Reserve system and so is Congress. You work for dollars which erode in value over time, your incentivized to spend it immediately - money is lent out freely which greases consumption and people living beyond their means, and when the bills come due they complain and ask the government for help. And they oblige as long as they keep voting for them.
Our founding fathers saw these problems, thats why they didn't create a Democracy, they created a Republic. The masses have no wisdom, they can't see the big picture. They don't know the government is stealing from them - the harder they work, the more the government takes, and the less you work, the more the government gives you. This is not a free society.
"Article 1 Section. 10. No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."
Note: "Make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." Why do you think the Continental Congress put this in the Constitution? Cause when you have entities printing their own money they have no backing and go to 0. So now the Federal government enjoys a monopoly in money making. As government spends, costs go up, and the riches go to the wealthiest military industrial complex and others who were fortunate enough to receive government contracts, grants, etc. in exchange for their services. The money they receive never before existed. They get rich. The poor receive the same wages. Inflation occurs - they feel the squeeze. More money is in the system - the federal reserve system's reserve requirement results in the creation of 10x the money that was handed out. Free credit is extended to all - bubbles occur - Real Estate zooms! As the bills come due, and inflation runs rampant, the working class is forced to make higher and higher payments and cope with the ever increasing costs. This is when things go Bust - summarized by a Costantino Bresciani-Turroni’s book The Economics of Inflation: A Study of Currency Depreciation in Post-War Germany: "…if the reduction of wages goes beyond a certain limit, or lasts too long, the physical energies of the working classes are affected. The lowering of the standard of living diminished the capacity for work, simply because wages were insufficient to provide the means of recuperation of worn-out human machines."
Keep backing the system, Mr. Palermo. The end is near. When it finally collapses, and mark my word it will, Americans will accept a dictator just as Weimar Germany did to get them out of their troubles. We will continue moving towards either Socialism or Fascism as the answer to our problems. Right now, I see Hillary represents the Socialism movement and McCain is the fascist movement - where we'll threaten the world and become a militant aggressor to obtain dominance over the world's resources in an effort to maintain the American standard of living. The middle east will turn into the battleground of the century.
DD:
Very Ron Paulestine remarks. Unfortunately some of your facts are incorrect. First, the federal government did not print money to finance its deficits. It has borrowed it. That is why we have a National debt in excess of $9 trillion dollars. Rather than spend what it takes in the federal government has borrowed and spent and obligated itself well above its income, and this is wrong and I agree with that point. However, to say we need to abolish the system to correct this is something I do not agree with. What we need to do is get rid of our culture of greed and tax those who can afford it to pay for the two wars we are fighting and/or get out of those wars. But to cut taxes at the same time we wage wars is stupid, plain and simple, and this platform that tax-cuts leads to more revenue nonsense only serves to support this stupidity.
You should also use tax collections as a percent of GDP, not simply a dollar amount, because as the economy grows so do tax revenues (even when it grows at the same time taxes are increased as has happened in the past). Another thing you should avoid is including payroll taxes because they are not income taxes. But, even using your numbers, lets see what really happened. GDP went from $9,268.4 to 13,194.7 over this time period, about a 42% nominal increase. Taxes, on the other hand, increased about 29% based on your numbers. Wonder why the deficit is growing? Tax cuts and war spending.
To say tax revenue increased because of the tax cuts is unsupported folly that the right wing republican party wants everyone to believe because then they can bankrupt Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, the social programs of the Great Society of the 1960s that they want to do away with. I guess they would rather have seniors and the poor begging at the church than living at or near the poverty line.
I am not advocating expansion of entitlements as you say. Rather I am advocating getting health care costs under control and making it available to everyone. Remove this uneven and anticompetitive burden from business and those who cannot afford. 50% of all personal bankruptcies are related to health care issues. What is the cost of this to society? What is the cost to society of people without health care insurance and no means to pay for it? You cannot simply ignore all of these issues and pretend that in a world based on pre-industrialization principals they will go away. They will, in fact, get worse. That’s why we have these programs in the first place. I am, and have been from the beginning, against bailing people out of mortgages and such. People need to live within their means and if they overreach because they wanted more then they should suffer the consequences. But why do you insist on lumping these people in with everyone else who has a need? Many people have little or no opportunity to ever get out of poverty. Many people have lost everything due to health care issues. Many children are cold and hungry. I don’t understand the intolerance that is implied by your rhetoric.
Our founding fathers were just as concerned with concentrations of wealth, including large corporate interests, taking control of government. That is more in tune with where we are today than some notion that the people are just stupid and can’t govern. The system was set up as it was to avoid the oppression of minorities by any majority. In a pure democracy the interests of minorities are ignored and they are oppressed. The words you quote are used out of context and related to the states vs. federal government.
Your claims about the wealthy avoiding taxes may have some merit as they certainly can hire talent to find loopholes and it pays to do that at their levels of earnings. But their effective tax rate does vary according to tax policy so the rest of the argument is unsupported by the evidence.
Your rant about inflationary pressures takes certain realities and expands them to beyond reason. Perhaps you should go get the money supply numbers and chart money supply relative to GDP over the past few decades. When you do that and find some substantiated claims as to the inflation of the money supply then let me know. Simple rhetoric without factual support can be a dangerous thing.
Keep pushing to get a system of government that stopped working a hundred years ago and you may get it. Unfortunately you may not like it when it happens.
I'd like to apologize for the ranty comment made earlier, but naturally, I stand by the assertions.
First, the federal government did not print money to finance its deficits. It has borrowed it. That is why we have a National debt in excess of $9 trillion dollars.
I’m not going to get into how the Government prints money to finance its deficits as the process is abstract. But yes, I will agree that the Gov’t borrows money – typically from foreign lenders so the result is that the US taxpayers are paying foreign governments and we become indebted to them.
What we need to do is get rid of our culture of greed and tax those who can afford it to pay for the two wars we are fighting and/or get out of those wars.
The sooner we get of the wars the better...Higher taxes during a period of economic recession doesn’t seem like a winning formula to me, especially when the best alternative for it is debt service!
But to cut taxes at the same time we wage wars is stupid, plain and simple, and this platform that tax-cuts leads to more revenue nonsense only serves to support this stupidity.
I agree with the 1st statement. I was against the war to begin with, I’m against them now. US Foreign Policy is bankrupting the nation. As far as the 2nd goes, It’s a matter of principle. The current formula is work harder, pay more.
To say tax revenue increased because of the tax cuts is unsupported folly that the right wing republican party wants everyone to believe because then they can bankrupt Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, the social programs of the Great Society of the 1960s that they want to do away with. I guess they would rather have seniors and the poor begging at the church than living at or near the poverty line.
Well, a lack of understanding of a true free market system results in the belief.
Milton Friedman on a Libertarian Society
What is the cost to society of people without health care insurance and no means to pay for it? You cannot simply ignore all of these issues and pretend that in a world based on pre-industrialization principals they will go away.
Ok, woah – I said “The last thing we need is an expansion of entitlements. Giving money to poor and middle class for doing nothing is tantamount to Socialism.” I did not mention health care. My stance on healthcare is available here: Of Free Markets and Medicine
But let me reiterate my fundamental belief that health care would be affordable today if the Gov't didnt mandate coverage through the HMO act and create medicare and medicaid.
They will, in fact, get worse. That’s why we have these programs in the first place. I am, and have been from the beginning, against bailing people out of mortgages and such. People need to live within their means and if they overreach because they wanted more then they should suffer the consequences. But why do you insist on lumping these people in with everyone else who has a need? Many people have little or no opportunity to ever get out of poverty. Many people have lost everything due to health care issues. Many children are cold and hungry. I don’t understand the intolerance that is implied by your rhetoric.
Giving money to the poor, in my belief, maintains their reliance on government indefinitely. In true Free Market Economics, everyone willing and able would have a job – because they’ll always be a market for labor. Current inflationary pressure on the middle and lower class is causing the current economic crises – they’ve been squeezed by the same system which provided them the expensive house they live in. They’re paycheck is not keeping pace with their expenses; this applies to seniors as well whom collect Social Security. As a result, their house is being foreclosed on. Savers and Borrowers The system is set up in a way which encourages people to take out debt and become indentured servants to financial institutions – resulting in a transfer of wealth from the low and middle income Americans to the wealthy investors and private banks. That’s why the system I believe in is most compassionate to the poor.
Our founding fathers were just as concerned with concentrations of wealth, including large corporate interests, taking control of government. That is more in tune with where we are today than some notion that the people are just stupid and can’t govern. The system was set up as it was to avoid the oppression of minorities by any majority. In a pure democracy the interests of minorities are ignored and they are oppressed. The words you quote are used out of context and related to the states vs. federal government.
I’ll withhold my comments on this one, but its clear the intent was to restrict not only states but the Feds to solely issue Gold and Silver as legal tender. Thomas Jefferson argued this point, he wrote the damn thing.
Your claims about the wealthy avoiding taxes may have some merit as they certainly can hire talent to find loopholes and it pays to do that at their levels of earnings. But their effective tax rate does vary according to tax policy so the rest of the argument is unsupported by the evidence.
I did some calcs – in 1998 and 1999 total percent of collected revenue collections that was paid out in the form of a return was 23%. In 2006, it was 11%.
Your rant about inflationary pressures takes certain realities and expands them to beyond reason. Perhaps you should go get the money supply numbers and chart money supply relative to GDP over the past few decades. When you do that and find some substantiated claims as to the inflation of the money supply then let me know. Simple rhetoric without factual support can be a dangerous thing.
I would like to, but the Government stopped publishing M3 to conceal part of the fraud.
And they only publish M1 and M3 on a historical basis so I painstakingly cobbled together M2.
M2 M2 Growth GDP GDP Growth M2/GDP
1999 4,671.9 9,268.4 50.4%
2000 4,964.5 6.3% 9,817.0 5.9% 50.6%
2001 5,468.4 10.2% 10,128.0 3.2% 54.0%
2002 5,842.2 6.8% 10,469.6 3.4% 55.8%
2003 6,102.6 4.5% 10,960.8 4.7% 55.7%
2004 6,457.0 5.8% 11,685.9 6.6% 55.3%
2005 6,718.1 4.0% 12,433.9 6.4% 54.0%
2006 7,035.5 4.7% 13,194.7 6.1% 53.3%
2007 7,447.0 5.8% 13,843.0 4.9% 53.8%
[Can't seem to paste this properly in a note]
Could only go back as far as 99’ with M2, M3 has historical since 1969. I forgot what I was looking for here but you can see the increase in the money supply - wondering what your interpretation is.
Keep pushing to get a system of government that stopped working a hundred years ago and you may get it. Unfortunately you may not like it when it happens.
I’m looking forward to a Libertarian Republic with an economic system based on sound monetary policy which affords everyone the right to keep and maintain the fruits of their labors, and frees the population from the wrath of a the boom-bust business cycle.
“To say tax revenue increased because of the tax cuts is unsupported folly that the right wing republican party wants everyone to believe because then they can bankrupt Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, the social programs of the Great Society of the 1960s that they want to do away with. I guess they would rather have seniors and the poor begging at the church than living at or near the poverty line.
Well, a lack of understanding of a true free market system results in the belief.”
No, a review of the facts leads me to this belief. Since the tax cuts began during the Reagan administration the wealthy have increased their share of the national income, from 17% in 1986 to over 21% in 2005. At the same time there is no evidence of any business investment boom accompanying these tax cuts. So show me how this is substantiated. I don’t care about the theory, I care about the actual results and they don’t support the proposition. In fact, the best business investment boom we had since the tax cuts began were during the Clinton years when taxes were increased on the wealthy. Go figure.
“But let me reiterate my fundamental belief that health care would be affordable today if the Gov't didnt mandate coverage through the HMO act and create medicare and medicaid.”
I don’t know why you believe this to be true. I can point you to a very good study on health care expenses in the US as compared to other developed countries. You need to sign up but it’s free. Go to McKinsey Global Research and get their Health Care report. Here is a link: http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/rp/healthcare/accounting_cost_healthcare.asp
“Giving money to the poor, in my belief, maintains their reliance on government indefinitely. In true Free Market Economics, everyone willing and able would have a job – because they’ll always be a market for labor.”
This is a fundamental misunderstanding. Free markets left unchecked simply do not work. There were many boom and bust cycles before the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Go Here: http://www.nber.org/cycles.html and check out business cycles in the US prior to the establishment of the institutions you want to do away with. During these dramatic downturns there were not jobs for everyone and left unregulated corporate power would squash individual workers until they were all living in poverty. They are supposed to do this – maximize profits.
“I did some calcs – in 1998 and 1999 total percent of collected revenue collections that was paid out in the form of a return was 23%. In 2006, it was 11%.”
If you read the article I posted before this one you will find a graph of the effective tax rate of the top 1% earners. It shows a different trend.
Regarding money supply growth, here is M2 as a percent of GDP:
1960 57.3%
1970 57.0%
1980 53.3%
1990 54.7%
2000 47.6%
2006 50.9%
The M2 numbers are from the Fed here: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/hist/h6hist1.txt
GDP is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis here:
http://www.bea.gov/national/index.htm#gdp
Use “Current Dollar and real GDP”
I come from a different school of thought. You are Keynesian and I'm Free marketeer - From Chicago/Austrian School of Economics. So we have conflicting ideologies, I just don't believe in the long term viability of Socialism, you do. I'd really like for you to watch the Milton Friedman series I linked for you in the previous post, as you may know he is one of the greatest economists of our time. Let me know how you score on this political test: http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html
The business cycles referenced in your link does not provide attribution. I believe that Government intervention probably contributed to a great many of them. Businesses' best interests are in he continued sustenance of
the economy.
It's great to be able to take on your former professor in this kind of forum, but you wouldn't expect me to do so if I were still in your class. Luckily I've graduated and as a result I'm a loose cannon. :)
DD: I am not a socialist in that I do not believe the means of production belong to everyone and I do believe in private property. To the extent that a capitalist society provides a safety net to those who are unsuccessful in the competition for resources I have no problem with some form of redistribution, and when private redistribution fails (as it always has) then societal redistribution through an elected government does not, in my mind, equal socialism. Nor does taxation to support military protection of life, liberty, and property, and those with the most property are those who should complain least about this use of their income, especially when they live in a society that allows them to accumulate shares of the national income that greatly exceed their relative contributions to it. Should we leave protection of the state to private interests as well? If we did, who would pay 100% of that cost? What about transportation systems such as national highways?
Private free markets left unregulated and unrestrained often lead to bad results that threaten the very democracy that supports the fundamentals of private property rights and freedom of choice to begin with. The winners in the free markets gain power, and history tells us they use that power to their advantage and the disadvantage of the rest to accumulate still more power. There is nothing wrong with this at its base – for example corporations are supposed to maximize profits and we know they will do so at all costs including driving wages down as much as possible. We want this because this results in competition and all of its benefits to our standard of living as a society. Without some form of balance mechanism to redistribute or regulate accumulated power, however, we ultimately risk revolt against the system that allows the concentration of power to occur – in this case unregulated free markets and our representative form of government. I point to the labor riots before collective bargaining and the wielding of monopoly power and economic oppression before anti-trust laws. The rules to the economic game should, in my view, result in a society where people do not go hungry, everyone is provided with reasonable opportunity to advance in the form of education and fulfillment of basic needs, and the concentration of power (as opposed to wealth) is limited in its ability to marginalize the talents and opportunities of the rest of society. These are lessons we have learned over our history distinct from economic theory that attempts to explain them and if we ignore them we risk imbalance of proportions that could threaten our very assumptions. We have made great progress toward taking advantage of the free market system while at the same time taming its natural and harmful side effects, and the efforts to reverse this progress are ill conceived in my humble opinion. To the extent these beliefs put me into your definition of socialist or Keynesian so be it, though neither of those would accurately encompass my beliefs.
I do not, by the way, believe that every aspect of life should be regulated or that the government should be legislating life style choices. I am more of a libertarian than my commentary would indicate, but when it comes to concentrations of power and the ill effects on many individuals within our society (and, ultimately, on our society) I draw the line at corporate libertarianism. Nor do I believe that being a libertarian necessarily means that one must shun all redistribution of wealth when the redistribution is a mechanism to maintain the society that allows individual liberties in the first place. Sometimes rigid adherence to basic principals can erode the system that allows the operation of those principals, and so I try to be more flexible in my thinking than can be described by a fixed classification. Perhaps I am simply a pragmatist.
Thanks for your comments – it is good to be able to openly debate issues of importance, and that includes an occasional rant:-)
Thanks. I understand my views regarding free market control may be viewed as extreme.
However, as a follow up to my arguments, can I ask you a question? We saw that M2 and M3 (if you continue to measure it) has grown over time. How does the money supply grow year over year? Where does this new money come from? Please explain.
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Btw, i wish theres a edit feature to these posts in order to correct some grammatical issues rather than having to delete and repost stuff.
DD: Based on prior conversations I assumed you understand the fractional reserve system and how the Fed uses open market operations to expand or contract bank reserves that are then used by banks to make loans. Fed buys a Treasury security from a dealer and deposits the proceeds into the dealers account by crediting the reserve account of the dealer’s bank. Bank then has excess reserves that do not earn interest, so bank makes loans to earn a return on the reserves. The proceeds of the loans made by bank are (to some extent) deposited into other banks increasing their reserves and they can use those to make loans. Each time new loans are made this way the money supply expands (this is the multiplier effect). To contract the money supply the Fed sells securities taking cash out of the system and it works in reverse.
If there is not enough money in the system to accommodate the growth of the economy interest rates will rise and so will unemployment. If there is too much we get inflation. The Fed's job is to balance between the two. This is not easy because there are other factors involved, especially as the economy becomes global in nature. For example, is the rising price of oil and other commodities today a monetary phenomenon or classic supply/demand in the global economy? Is it something the Fed has any control over outside of slowing the US economy to take some pressure off of the global demand?
The Fed is not always perfect, that's for sure. But that's a different conversation we have had before.
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