by David Stockman
David Stockman’s Contra Corner
We are now in month 83 of this so-called recovery. Yet there are still 45 million people on food stamps——one out of every seven Americans. The median real household income is still 5% below its level in the fall of 2007. There are still only 71 million full-time, full-pay “breadwinner” jobs in the nation—–nearly 2 million fewer than when Bill Clinton was packing his bags to vacate the White House.
At the same time, we have had monetary stimulus like never before. There has been 90 straight months of virtually zero interest rates. The balance sheet of the Fed has been expanded by $3.5 trillion. For point of reference, that is 4X more than all the bond-buying during the entire first 94 years of the Fed’s history.