The FOMC statement today left all but the most literate on Wall Street grasping at straws. The only significant change to the statement was a substitution of the word "modest" for "moderate" in the Fed's description of the current performance of the US economy. How the heck are we supposed to figure out whether to buy stocks or bonds or canned goods based on that???? For those not wise to the language torturing ways of the Fed this might seem a minor change. After all the definitions of modest and moderate, according to Merriam Webster, are not that different:

Modest: Limited in size, amount or scope

Moderate: Limited in scope or effect

But if you think there's no difference you just don't know what the heck you're talking about. So we turn to the indispensible Jon Hilsenrath, a wordsmith himself, for the definitive parsing of the Fed statement:

The description of growth was a smidgen more subdued than the Fed's previous one, which termed the growth rate as "moderate," but the Fed said it expects both pace of growth and inflation to pick up later in the year.

Ah, well. That makes it clear. Growth is a smidgen less than what prevailed at the previous FOMC meeting. Anybody know how much a smidgen is? Returning to Webster we find that smidgen means "a small amount" or one might say "limited in size, amount or scope". So the economy is now growing at a pace that is modestly less than moderate. 

Well, okay, but hasn't the Fed been doing this QE thing to prevent just such a moderate change for the worse in growth? Isn't QE supposed to make things better and by more than a smidgen? I thought the Fed was expecting the economy to get modestly better? They even say that they expect growth and inflation to pick up later in the year. Isn't that what they said at the beginning of the year? If their previous forecast was off by a smidgen, what if this one is modestly wrong too?

So, here's my modest proposal. Since the members of the Federal Reserve don't seem to be adding even a smidgen to GDP and economists in general seem to be a burden on society and we have a food stamp problem, I propose that we offer every food stamp recipient a Fed Governor in lieu of their next ration of food stamps. I estimate that an economist of modest proportion could feed a family of four for at least a month and possibly longer if sweetbreads are considered. For larger families we can throw in a Fed staffer. Considering that there doesn't seem to be a lack of applicants for jobs at the Fed we should have a steady and fresh supply of economists available to the program for at least a year. We may have to suspend the fillibuster rule to get them through Congress in a timely manner but that seems a small price to pay to rid our country of the scourge of economists pretending to be able to fathom the intricacies of the economy. So to sum up, we get rid of the infestation of economists, we reduce the cost of the food stamp program thereby reducing the deficit and best of all, we don't have to pretend that the health of our markets depends on a change of two letters. How's that for a grand bargain?