I’m not an economist but…

…I read Krugman’s latest post on Conscience of a Liberal this morning about the recent actions of the Fed to raise interest rates.  I’m scratching my head over this one as well because the economy, as I see it, is still in the dumps and I’m still meeting plenty of people who think the economy sucks and unemployment is too high and self-employed people are hurting and it’s just pretty fricking awful all over the damn place.  So, I’m going to guess that the actions of the Fed are in response to something Wall Street is doing as they take advantage of The Market and everyone else in the world.  Are we experiencing another housing bubble? Are the hedge funds still accumulating foreclosed properties like there’s no tomorrow, driving up the cost of housing for everyone else?  I was lucky to get my house but I knew there were a lot of other offers on it and the only thing that gave me an edge is that I had cash and was an owner who was actually going to, you know, live there.

Anyway, I’m going to guess that there’s something afoot that I haven’t paid attention to that is on the Fed’s radar and since bankers, brokers, hedgies and the bonus class are the only people we bail out and go out of our way to not inconvenience, the rest of the world’s billions will just have to suck it up.  If our lives become even more difficult and strained, well, tough titties for us. We must not make it hard for the yacht owners to pay their kids private school tuitions or wives go without the underpaid au pairs for even one summer.  And since the vast majority of us do not occupy the ranks of the “not to be inconvenienced” group, it should come as no surprise that the consequences of the Fed’s actions on OUR lives is of no concern to it.  Of course, impoverishing the real market is eventually self-limiting and self-correcting, as Jefferson once wrote, but people will put up with a lot of shit before they throw the bastards out.

Or is there a political element to this strategy?  Is it still the plan to inflict as much suffering on average Americans as possible so that they will snap and take any measly short term relief in exchange for giving up whatever is left of the tattered social safety net?  If I were going to gut social security, this is not the way I would do it.  No, I’d wait until the economy was growing like Topsy and everyone was fat and happy and only then spring it on us that we’d have to give up social security.  But maybe these guys think Fear, Uncertainty and Dread will be more effective.  If we plunge back into recession because of it, will the Democrats catch the blame, along with all the bad stuff headed their way over Obamacare?  Time will tell.  But one thing is for sure.  The rest of us must still pay for the outrageously reckless behavior of a handful of selfish, greedy sociopaths.