The Rich Get Rich and the Poor Get Poorer--on the Taxes of the Poor
The Fed's airheaded bubble orthodoxy By Steven Pearlstein Friday, November 13, 2009 The Federal Reserve is still going through its "lessons-learned" exercise from the recent financial crisis, but there's one lesson it clearly has not yet absorbed -- the one about ignoring and enabling credit bubbles. That's the only conclusion that can be drawn from the Fed's decision last week to not only keep its benchmark interest rates at zero but also let everyone know that it intends to leave them there for a good long time. In case anyone missed the message, Fed officials and other central bankers and finance ministers repeated their promise several days later at a meeting in St. Andrews, Scotland, where they vowed to not let up the gas pedals of fiscal and monetary stimulus. And on Tuesday, the point was driven home again by members of the Fed's policy panel in three separate speeches. Not surprisingly, all of this sparked a week-long party in financial markets that had already experienced pow…