The establishment press must not think that anyone should care about the millions of dollars Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary have "earned" making speeches, particularly to powerful banks and Wall Street firms, since he left the presidency in 2001 and after her time as Secretary of State ended in 2013.
That's the only explanation as to why Mrs. Clinton could promise, as she did on Tuesday, that the economy won't be rigged in favor of Wall Street if she is elected President, and then have a lapdog like MSNBC's Kasie Hunt completely fail to touch on the deep and shameless hypocrisy in Mrs. Clinton's statement. At least Hunt acknowledged that the economy, after 7-1/2 long years under President Barack Obama, "has been for many Americans slow to recover." No kidding, Kasie.
It would have been even better if Hunt had acknowledged that even the Federal Reserve, which has been predicting that decent economic growth would come around eventually every year since the recession officially ended, has thrown in the towel, predicting at least another 2-1/2 years of slow growth.
One has to wonder how anyone can believe, let alone cheer, a statement from Mrs. Clinton that an economy under her presidency wouldn't be rigged, but here it is, followed by Hunt's admission:
Transcript:
HILLARY CLINTON: He (Donald Trump) would rig the economy for Wall Street again. Well, that will not happen on my watch, I can guarantee you. (crowd cheers)
KASIE HUNT, MSNBC: The challenge of course that the, the economy under President Obama has been for many Americans slow to recover. Wages, of course, have not kept pace. Many people are working more than one job, and so she has to make a speech that essentially says, "I understand your frustrations, but this how all this is going to play out." I think for a lot of voters Donald Trump is embodiment of their frustration and I think that’s difficult piece for her. We definitely saw the same Hillary Clinton who was in a groove attacking Donald Trump on national security today, but the ground was little bit less solid.
This "Hillary in a groove" talk was a repeat from Hunt's immediate remarks after the speech a few hours before.
Hunt should have known, as a Wall Street Journal editorial noted on June 16, that even the Fed is predicting that the economy will remain unacceptably sluggish for at least the next 30 months. The Journal placed the blame where it belongs — on Keynesian fiscal and monetary policies Mrs. Clinton and Fed Chairman Janet Yellen would almost certainly continue to advocate, and which Wall Street has cheered as stock valuations in this low-rate environment have climbed to absurd levels:
... As recently as December, the FOMC members had a median growth estimate for 2016 of 2.4%. By March it had fallen to 2.2%, and on Wednesday it was down to 2%. This follows the Federal Reserve’s consistent record of forecasting error during this expansion in which it has begun every year predicting stronger growth than has always occurred.
... More distressing, the Fed now predicts growth won’t improve even in 2017-2018. In previous years the FOMC median forecast typically predicted that growth would accelerate in the future to a more normal rate above 3%. But now even the Fed has accepted the new abnormal of 2% being the best we will do. This may be more realistic than its previous optimism, but it also underscores America’s depressing slow-growth reality.
The Keynesian economists who have run U.S. economic policy since 2008 are clearly stumped. First they said $800 billion in fiscal stimulus would stir a return to prosperity, then they said that monetary stimulus would do the trick. Now they blame their failure on “secular stagnation” and Republicans in Congress whose pro-growth proposals have been blocked at every turn by Senate Democrats and President Obama.
... the reality is that this is the (Paul) Krugman-Obama economy. The White House and Fed have spent eight years pursuing the City University economist’s agenda of raising taxes, increasing regulation in every possible section of the private economy, and trying any new monetary experiment.
Seven years after the recession ended, we know the score: The slowest expansion in decades, falling labor participation rates last seen in the 1970s, mediocre business investment, a declining pace of business start-ups, disappointing wage growth, rising inequality, and an outbreak of angry populism on the left and right. If we were responsible for that result, we’d try to deny paternity too.
If slow growth indeed continues through the end of 2018, that would mean that America will have endured 10 years of Keynesian mediocrity and misery — America's lost decade. The left's apparatchiks in the establishment press, despite past nationwide prosperities and current successes in a few red states based on opposite policies, insist that this "new (ab)normal" is the best we can do. That's rubbish.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
