Simon Wren-Lewis asked a good question yesterday, Can Central Banks Make 3 Major Mistakes in a Row and Stay Independent? He pointed out that the central banks (the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, and so on) are primarily responsible for the housing bubble and resulting market crash. Then, when the governments stupidly turned to austerity, the central banks did nothing — in particular, they didn’t make it clear to policy makers that they really had no tools at their disposal. And the third mistake, Wren-Lewis thinks, is this big push now for the central banks to “normalize” the situation. By that, they mean raise interest rates back to where they would normally be and not right at zero.

Wren-Lewis’ concern is that the central banks acting so badly will cause them to become controlled by elected officials. He thinks this is a bad thing because he looks back to The Great Moderation after Paul Volcker and others tamed the business cycle. I appreciate that way of thinking. At the same time, the central banks are unaccountable plutocratic institutions. Today in the United States, the Fed doesn’t seem to care about workers. It seems only interested in doing the bidding of the banking industry.

I think it is very interesting that when the European Central Bank was formed, it was not given a dual mandate to stabilize prices and maximize employment; it was only given the mandate to stabalize prices. This fact almost caused the EU to break apart in 2010 when the bank didn’t seem to see its purpose as being the lender of last resort. But the point is that things have changed so much since the 1960s when it was generally agreed that people needed jobs. Now the plutocrats are in charge and all they care about is making their own lives better.

So it’s kind of hard for me to think that making central banks dependent upon the whims of democratically elected officials is all that bad. As Simon Wren-Lewis noted, “What central banks should be doing in these circumstances is allowing their economies to run hot for a time, even though this might produce some increase in inflation above target.” But instead, we are getting the opposite. After years of stagnant wage growth, the first sign of increasing wages makes them freak out and want to slow the economy. As Dean Baker always says, this is a decision to put millions of people out of work.

As long as we have a central bank that cares only about the interests of the financial industry, I think it is a mistake to have it independent. In that case, no matter how good the government’s fiscal management, regular workers will continue to see their wages stagnate. And they will be the lucky ones in that they at least have jobs. The Federal Reserve has been unable to help the American worker for almost a decade, but can (and apparently will) hurt the American worker as the economy improves. This makes me wonder about independent central banks. We the people have to take control — either directly or by putting better people in them.

As you all can no doubt tell, I’m just not as plugged into politics as I used to be. I still follow big things. I’ve been reading a lot about the Panama Papers and I want to write about it. But things on the edge get past me. And one of those things that has gotten past me is the Bernie or Bust movement. It’s not that I didn’t know it existed. It’s that I didn’t know that people were actually serious about it. I’m shocked to find that they are.

As you all know, I’m a big Bernie Sanders supporter. I’ve not only been very vocal about that, but he’s the first presidential candidate that I’ve given money to since 1988. That’s right kiddos: almost 30 years! But there is no question that if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, that I will vote for her in the general election. Of course, I actually think far more highly of Clinton than a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters. So let’s make it really clear. Let’s take someone I absolute despise: Andrew Cuomo. It’s not just his policies, which are pretty bad on economic issues (though not always); it’s that I hate him in a visceral way. But despite what I’ve said in the past, if the choice were him and Trump, Cruz, or any of the Republicans, I would hold my nose and vote for Cuomo.

My question for the Bernie or Bust people is, “What do you think you will be accomplishing?” But I think I already know. I think they look at the Republican Party and think, “The hard right conservatives did the same thing to the Republicans and they won!” The problem with that idea is that it is totally wrong. The hard right didn’t take over the Republican Party by not voting for Nixon and Ford. They took over the party election by election at from the very lowest levels of the party. Not voting or voting for some third party candidate in the presidential race is not going to send any kind of message to the Democratic Party.

And what — Just what?! — do the Bernie or Bust people think this election was all about? To me, they sound like the silly Carey Wedler who thought that all we had to do is elect the right president and then all our dreams would come true. We aren’t living in a Disney animated feature. This isn’t about Bernie Sanders, even as much as I admire him. This is about a movement in the Democratic Party. And it is that movement that matters.

Polling indicates that Sanders is the preferred choice of about 40% of the Democratic Party. What that represents is the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. And that means we have more than enough power to take over the party. For one thing, a lot of people won’t vote for Sanders for a lot of non-ideological reasons (eg, the “S” word, the chance to elect the first woman president). The question is whether that movement will do something, rather than act like Carey Wedler, who groused for a couple of years and then burned her Obama t-shirt.

There are a lot of things you can do. Here are a few:

• Get involved with your local Democratic Party (follow the links);
• Find a local candidate and volunteer;
• Start a group (it could even be a new chapter of Drinking Liberally);
• Run for a local office.

I suppose I don’t really care if the Bernie or Bust people sit out this election. I think it is a mistake, but it’s their choice. But I suspect sitting out this election goes along with sitting out the next four years and complaining. We have already reached peak “burning political t-shirt” videos. If people are going to make a stand then they should really make a stand. Otherwise, they shouldn’t lazily help the Republicans replace Justice Scalia with an even worse person.

Last week, Donald Trump announced that women who get (or try to get) abortions should be criminally charged. His campaign quickly walked back the claim. But Katha Pollitt made an excellent point about this in an article in The New York Times, Abortion and Punishment. Basically, she says, “Why not?” If conservatives really believe abortion of a zygote is murder — that a 2n diploid cell is a full human being with complete Constitutional rights — then shouldn’t any woman who attempts to get an abortion at least be guilty of attempted murder?

As Pollitt noted, the anti-choice movement gets around this problem by claiming that the women are victims. They don’t really want to get abortions, it is just all of us pro-choice advocates who push them into it. I would take this argument more seriously if these same anti-choice proponents were for a strong social welfare program. But in general, they want women to have no choice in when they have children and then to abandon them to a Dickensian life. But regardless of that, Pollitt said, “If you consider how determined a woman has to be to get an abortion in much of the country these days and how much energy states expend trying to dissuade her, it’s hard to see her as a frail flower.” Indeed.

But the truth of the matter is that the anti-choice people are just liars. What they want right now is to overturn Roe v Wade — either in the courts or through a Constitutional amendment. In other words, they want to allow the states to decide. But how does that make any sense? So abortion is murder in Alabama but not in California? The truth of the matter is that they don’t want to overturn Roe v Wade, they want the opposite of it; they want abortion to be considered murder everywhere.

It’s just like with the old (and still quite common) conservative complaint about liberal activist judges. Well, there pretty much are none of them. The activist judges are almost entirely conservative. But conservatives didn’t care about activist judges then and they don’t care about them now. They only care that the judges provide decisions that they agree with. And I’m not against that. I want the same thing! But I don’t go around claiming that I alone know what the Constitution means and therefore any decision I don’t like is the result of a conservative activist judge.

So the anti-choice movement will use their “states’ rights” argument right up to the point that they get them. Once Alabama can outlaw abortion, the conservatives will turn on a dime and claim that states should have no right to allow women to have abortions. This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy about conservatives: there is no consistency. The ends always justify the means. When it came to same sex marriage, they thought it shouldn’t be up to the states and we got the Defense of Marriage Act. But when it is about abortion, it is just the opposite — for right now.

As for me: I’m a federalist. One of the biggest problems with Scalia’s death is that it can end up with different federal law in different areas of the country. It has the potential to turn us into a confederacy. And we’ve tried that and it failed. When people talk about states’ rights and when libertarians claim that local control is always better, what they are really saying is that they want their own little preferred laws — usually really vile ones. My friends, the conservatives represent the most unpatriotic movement we have in this country.

Paul Krugman wrote an interesting blog post, The Pathos of Republican Reformers. It starts, “Ross Douthat has a wonderfully written, heartfelt takedown of the WSJ editorial page, which is — surprise! — dead set against any deviation from the tax-cuts-for-the-rich agenda.” But Krugman goes on to wonder about the naivete of these supposed reformers; did they “really think there was any chance that their ideas would achieve headway within the party?” Well, I’m not quite so sympathetic toward these people — especially Ross Douthat.

Douthat is a Catholic and that seems to be why he is a conservative. I refer to him as “God’s older brother.” The truth is that Catholics don’t have to be conservatives. Just look at Garry Wills. The issue for Christians is always what you are going to focus on. Douthat focuses on homosexuality and abortion. He cares about feeding the poor and so on, but not enough to turn against a party that is totally at odds with that. And that’s true of all of the reformish conservatives. They all have their little issues with the Republican Party, but they all buy into the basic idea that the rich deserve everything and the government should be set up to facilitate that.

But as Krugman says in other words: what the hell is the Republican Party all about anyway? So I think all these Republican reformers are frauds. Even Josh Barro. Of all the Republican reformers, he’s the only one (along with Bruce Bartlett — who has similar problems) that even pretends to take reform seriously. The rest just want to make the Republican Party seem better. But look at how Barro provided cover for Chris Christie’s fiasco on the Hudson River tunnel.

We got into a small public fight about it. He claimed that Christie was against the tunnel because it was too expensive. I noted that this was what politicians always said when they wanted to kill something for other reasons. No politician ever says, “I want to kill this needed infrastructure project because I want to give the money away to my rich friends.” This is political science 101. See the book Winner-Take-All Politics if you have any questions. But Barro claimed I was dumb because as a liberal, I just wanted to spend money without worrying about efficiency. Then a year later, it came out that Chris Christie did in fact kill the tunnel so he could cut taxes and that he would never have allowed the tunnel — a decision that will cost the state of New Jersey billions of extra dollars over the coming years.

Think about things from the other side. I have a lot of problems with the Democratic Party. I’m highly critical of it and I’m very open about the fact that in a parliamentary system, I would not be a Democrat. Yet I don’t put on airs that I’m a Democratic Party reformer. And no one in the Democratic Party does that. The reason is simple: everyone in every political party has problems with it. There are always things that they don’t agree with. So what’s the big deal about Republican reformers?

It’s very simple. The Republican Party is so broken — it has nothing to offer to the nation — that it needs these apologists who claim to be reformers. And the reason for this is because our media is not willing to tell the truth. So they have to pretend that there are people in the Republican Party trying to turn it into something that a reasonable and informed person could support. But none of these guys actually care about reforming what is wrong with the party. David Frum wants gun control, but keep those tax cuts for the rich and foreign wars coming! And Ross Douthat might care about the poor, but not enough to give up on the party that panders to what he really cares about: homosexuality and abortion.

I follow Tim Duy’s Fed Watch, but not carefully. When I say that economics makes my brain hurt, it is this kind of stuff that I’m talking about. I don’t think that most people give much thought to things like “money.” If you do, you will find yourself getting confused and anxious. Money really is just a shared delusion. So when you start talking about money supply and inflation, well, your brain starts boiling and you fear you may explode.

Most people I talk to think inflation works in a simple way. There is a certain amount of cash in the economy. If the government prints more of the money, it will be worth less. This is not how money works at all. But sadly, I cannot tell you how money does work. And sadder still is the fact that no one I’ve ever read has been able to make me understand how money works. It’s like black magic. And the witches and warlocks stirring their cauldron of bubbling brew are the members of the Federal Reserve.

But just because I don’t know what money is, doesn’t mean that I don’t know what those witches and warlocks are doing. But I often wonder what they think they are doing. On 16 December 2015, the Fed raised its target funds rate. But why? We know that raising interest rates will cause the economy to cool down. If inflation is rising, raising interest rates will stop it. This is one thing we know without peering into the bubbling cauldron.

But was there any sign of inflation? No. In fact, inflation has stayed stubbornly below the Fed’s target rate (which is itself far too low) of 2%. But the argument was that inflation could take off. Just yesterday, Heather Long at CNN reported, Has the Federal Reserve Messed Up? But if inflation takes off, the Fed can just raise interest rates — and fast. So what’s the big deal?

On the other of hand, there is the chance that raising interest rates too soon could throw the economy back into recession. And then what would the Fed do? Are there any raven’s feet to drop in the cauldron that would fix the problem? No! The Fed would have no tools whatsoever to fight the recession. We would have to depend upon fiscal policy, which means Congress, which means that nothing would be done.

But Long’s point is that if the Fed can just get interest rates high enough, then they will be able to lower them in case a recession comes along. This is the kind of logic that only idiots in the finance world could think makes sense. It’s like eating poison everyday so you have the option of not eating it when you get sick. But then, as a Rhodes Scholar with a master’s degree from Oxford, I have a feeling that she doesn’t spend much time with people who aren’t in the top 10% of income earners — other than the barista who makes her $5 Salted Caramel Mocha Frappuccino.

So with Heather Long and the rest of the class that never has to worry about losing their jobs talking such nonsense, I was happy to see that Tim Duy was making a more reasonable argument, Yellen Pivots Toward Saving Her Legacy. In particular, he focused on Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s recognition of the extremely asymmetric risks that the economy faces.

It’s really simple. On the one side, you have a small risk of rising inflation that the Fed has more than enough tools to deal with. On the other side, you have what I think is a rather greater risk of recession that the Fed has absolutely no tools to deal with. But I know: Heather Long and the rest of the business “journalists” want to raise rates so the Fed can have tools to deal with a recession. But there is no sense of the risk of gaining those tools. Duy was right when he wrote, “The incoming data suggests that means the economy needs to run hotter for longer if the Fed wants to leave the zero bound behind. Yellen is getting that message.”

So I’m glad that Yellen and (a personal hero) Lael Brainard and others on the Federal Reserve Board are casting their spells for the good of the economy and not the bankers and their mindless “journalist” apologists.