Around this time a year ago those who should know better were up in arms about the Federal Reserve. After an early December rate hike, the Fed-obsessed expressed rage that the central bank was supposedl asphyxiating economic growth. President Trump chimed in with all sorts of complaints about how President Obama enjoyed zero rates of interest, yet the “Trump economy” had to endure all manner of hikes.
All of this was well beneath a Republican party normally respectful of market forces. To the Republicans of the past, the idea that the Fed was or could be controlling the price of and access to credit would have been laughable. Conservatives and Republicans who'd come of age during an era in which central planning of resources was thoroughly rejected around the world would have laughed at the idea that the Fed could somehow make credit easy by decree. Hadn't lefty New Yorkers tried to decree low apartment-rental prices in New York, with scarcity the result?
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