The Fed has announced–note, there are unquestionably many things they do that they do NOT announce, meaning that what they do announce is intended to sway actions on the part of someone in the direction of something–that they are going to sell off short term US Treasury bonds and buy longer term bonds. The intent is to keep interest rates low.
Plainly, high interest rates are not keeping people from borrowing money. Interest rates are and have been very low for a number of years now. People are not borrowing money because of doubt about the future. We have a Socialist in the White House who not only does not understand business, but is actively antagonistic and mistrustful of the very people he needs to be opening up their checkbooks and expanding, to create the sorts of jobs that have made America a wealthy and happy nation.
It is always hard to state what the real aims of this policy are, but it would seem clear to me that the long term future of America is in more doubt than the short term. I don’t think anyone seriously doubts we will be able to pay our bills for the next 3 years.
However, once the LARGE tax increases that will fund Obamacare–which in many respects is nothing but a massive expansion of Medicaid, coupled with large insurance premium increases for all small businesses–go into effect, it is unclear where we will be. If we fail to elect a true fiscal conservative to the White House–Mitt Romney does not fit this bill, but in my view Perry and Paul would (I like Cain and Bachman as well)–then our economic predicament could be getting pretty bad by 2014 or so.
Logically, the markets know this, so the interest that we would need to pay to get investors to buy the bonds would have to be increasing right now. The Fed is in effect putting a veil onto the precariousness of our long term economic future.
Free markets only work when market forces are allowed to operate freely. This should be obvious, but for many it is not. Here, an institution we the American people do not control is working to mask the symptoms of our economic illness. It is curing nothing, and helping nothing.