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The Republican-led Senate looks set to approve Judy Shelton as a Federal Reserve governor, and looks to be in no hurry to provide the full amount of relief through UI benefits and aid to S/L govts that is needed to stave off an economic calamity. 1
Further, the Senate has shown no will to force better virus management practices (testing, tracing, etc…) down the throat of the Trump admin, who would prefer to pretend none of this is happening. 2
What does the coming Shelton confirmation and the refusal to act at scale to address the economic fallout of covid – or even to get a handle on the public health aspects of it - have in common? 3
It means that Mitch McConnell would prefer to give up even the pretense of solving problems for real people, and focus 100% on the task of hamstringing the next administration – just as he did in the Obama administration. 4
For example, why not make economic relief and recovery efforts conditions-based with triggers that keep aid flowing so long as the economy is weak? Because then Congress can’t throttle recovery with austerity, like they did after 2011. 5
epi.org/publication/wh…
And why nominate Judy Shelton – somebody with zero economic expertise? Her recent conversion to become a monetary dove hardly makes her special – everybody even remotely sensible is dovish these days. 6
No, her real value-add for Republicans is that she’s a partisan to her bones – she’ll agitate for less Fed support for economic recovery w/in the first 6 months of a new administration. It’s this utterly shameless partisanship that makes her useful. 7
It is astounding that with joblessness at around 15% and virus cases surging again after having never been suppressed that Republican policymakers have grabbed the role of obstructionists – even though they hold the presidency and the Senate. 8
And they have a House that is desperate to pass big relief efforts. But today’s Republican policymakers don’t know and don’t care how to actually help people – they only know how to undermine others’ efforts to help. They are truly pathetic. 9
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Josh Bivens
@joshbivens_DC
This WaPo story is infuriating. Sounds like Senate republicans want to go cheap (and cruel) on by far the most-important bits of the economic response to Covid – enhanced UI benefits and aid to state/local governments. 1
washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020…
Job growth will be 100% determined by the shortfall of aggregate demand relative to potential GDP for the next year. This shortfall will remain enormous if the enhanced UI benefits and the aid to S/L govts are both ignored – these combined constitute a huge “fiscal cliff”. 2
On UI, the extra $600 weekly payment by itself added $840 billion at an annualized rate to U.S. personal income in May. If it goes to zero, we’ll end up a year from now with about 5 million fewer jobs than we’d have if we kept this money flowing. 3
epi.org/blog/cutting-o…
Read 12 tweets
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Josh Bivens
@joshbivens_DC
Obviously nobody cares (rightly) what I think about the ongoing protests. But it feels wrong to express opinions on twitter about other topics while ignoring the most-important thing going on in the US today - the protests and the unhinged, ultra-violent response of cops.1
Are there cops who are decent people? Sure. But the problem with American policing is that it’s rotten and racist as an institutional matter, and, the few good apples too often get quickly ruined by the rest of the barrel. Last few days have left no doubt about this. 2
I’m no expert in police reform or this history, so, never really seemed like my place to talk about any of this. But you don’t need to be an expert to see that far too many police treat Black people like the US is their open-air prison and cops are the guards.3
Read 5 tweets
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Josh Bivens
@joshbivens_DC
There’s a narrative going around that Trump deserves credit, however grudgingly given, by progressives who have long argued that the Fed should be more willing to test the lower limits of unemployment. This seems clearly wrong to me. 1/20
The argument runs that by leaning on Fed chair Powell to keep rates low, Trump has stopped the Fed from raising rates and cutting off the recovery too soon. It’s certainly true that in its history the Fed has cut recoveries short far too often. 2
epi.org/blog/focus-on-…
But what’s the evidence that it’s Trump, not something else, that has led the Fed to be more admirably open-minded in testing how low unemployment can go this time? I’d argue, in fact, that Trump’s carping has been an obstacle, not a help, in the push for more dovish policy. 3
Read 20 tweets

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