The US economy runs on money printing and artificially low interest rates. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the housing market.
With aggressive rate hikes in its war against price inflation, the Federal Reserve pricked the housing bubble and air continues to seep out. Existing home sales fall for the 11th straight month in December — the longest streak of declines in history.
The US housing bubble continues to lose air at a rapid rate. Existing home sales fell for the 10th straight month in November. This stretch of declining home sales is longer than the housing bust preceding the 2008 financial crisis.
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A recent Paul Krugman New York Times column praised the success of the Keynesian macro model in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. In his view, the Federal Reserve did exactly what was necessary – pushed interest rates to zero and launched rounds of quantitative easing to jumpstart demand. As Tom Woods and Bob Murphy put it in a recent episode of the Contra Krugman podcast, “we agree that Krugman’s model did great…if we overlook all the times it blew up in his face.”
As is typical of Keynesians, Krugman ignores the side-effects of Federal Reserve policy. It works for a while, but it perpetuates the boom-bust business cycle. Sure, the economy today seems to be booming, but there is a rotten underbelly that most everybody in the mainstream seems to be ignoring. Peter Schmidt offers a succinct breakdown of Keynesian-based Fed policy and reveals why its doomed to failure.
