The complete failure of American monetary policy to steer the economy toward any meaningful growth should have been an indicator that the missing element is fiscal policy, all but non-existent from our lame Congress. This revelation from people at the Fed is not new, as Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernenke both called for more fiscal stimulus from Congress.

Greenspan went against his fellow conservatives trying to privatize Social Security, much to the chagrin of Paul Ryan, and Bernenke clearly stated to CNN that money is created by keystrokes marking up accounts at the Fed, not taxation or borrowing. The government simply cannot defy reality to collect or borrow what doesn’t exist. If the people were to ever have a collective epiphany and realize that any misery in their economy is entirely by political choice, not economics, the fate of most politicians would be ugly.

Money is a no-cost commodity to Congress to use to shape the economy and society and monetary inflation is almost impossible to obtain with a fiat currency and floating exchange. A “balanced” budget, the holy grail of corrupt or ignorant pandering politicians, is actually a 100% tax rate that claws back all payments the government makes to “pay for” the goods and services it uses, leaving nothing in the private sector to store value realized from commerce or retire private sector debt. The only thing that puzzles me about our economy is how we manage to limp along doing everything backwards.