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Ontario Premier Doug Ford said ”he was ready to ‘throw the book’ at those who hiked prices on essential goods by five or ten times their usual value.” 

In economics, numbers without context are often difficult to understand. The price of apples can only be understood when compared to the price of oranges, or to your salary, or to yesterday’s price. This is especially true with astronomically high numbers, such as $23 trillion. As of April 16, 2020, the US national debt1   stands at this amount.

Most states and municipalities have shut down major sectors of their economies in the hope of minimizing the very real medical damage from the spread of the coronavirus. The benefit is assumed to be in saved lives, or at least a “flattened curve” that allows time for hospitals to ramp up capacity and for medical research to find treatments and a vaccine. To that extent, the economic shutdown will create a lot of good.

April’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting did not offer many surprises and the targeted federal funds rate remained unchanged at 0 to 0.25 percent. Until recently it was the Committee’s interest rate decision which held the interest of the populace, but given the newly created billion-dollar lending programs, Main Street has been given a new reason to pay attention.

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Perhaps never before in American history have the unelected technocrats played such an enormous role in shaping public policy in America.

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In my first week in the House of Representatives in 1976, I cast one of the two votes against legislation appropriating funds for a swine flu vaccination program. A swine flu outbreak was then dominating headlines, so most in DC were frantic to “do something” about the virus.

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In an effort to “fight” the consequences of the politically orchestrated “lockdown,” the Fed pumps vast amounts of money into the economy. It injects base money into the banking system. It also monetizes outstanding debt and finances the US administration’s deficit spending policy by issuing new money.

At least since I first read George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language, I have been a student of the use of weasel words. I have joined what he called the “struggle against the abuse of language,” because “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful…and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”