Word: feds
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...other hand, headlines -- sometimes in the same day's newspaper -- tell us that the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates out of fear that the economy is creating too many new jobs too fast. And the Clinton Administration has supported these Fed moves. According to Bob Woodward's new book, The Agenda, Fed chairman Alan Greenspan has become Bill Clinton's virtual economic tutor...
...what is the point of all this self-contradictory government effort on our behalf? Are more jobs a good thing or a bad thing? And how can the government be on both sides of that question simultaneously? Why create a job if this just hastens the moment when the Fed will say that's one job too many? Why retrain an unemployed worker if there's some government-imposed limit on total employment anyway? Is every welfare mother who takes a job supposed to take it away from someone else so the total of workers doesn't increase...
...bafflement goes beyond the controversy over whether the Fed is doing the right thing at this particular time. Isn't the government inherently working at cross-purposes to itself? Clinton's answer -- that the Fed can safely raise interest rates without reducing growth or job creation -- is no answer at all. The purpose of raising interest rates is to slow the economy. If it doesn't do that, it hasn't worked...
Some people escape this puzzle by arguing that one side or the other of the government's push-me pull-you jobs policy is simply wrong. There are always those eager to criticize the Fed for squeezing unnecessarily. And there are those who say government jobs-creation programs of any kind are a waste...
...Fed bashers rarely dispute the Fed's theoretical duty to guard against inflation by preventing the economy from overheating -- that is, to nurture long-term growth even at the short-term cost of jobs. It's just that, to the Fed's critics, now is always the wrong time to squeeze. And critics of government jobs programs have their own favorite jobs-creation nostrums, such as business tax cuts. They also like the idea of forcing welfare mothers to work. No one wants to leave the job of jobs to the Fed. So the puzzle remains...