Z Quote

For there is, when you come down to it, always something slightly

unsavory about the business of central banking. A market economy -- even

the Goldilocks economy of America in the 90's -- requires that a certain

number of people who want to work be unable to find jobs so that their

example will discipline the wage demands of those who are already

employed. Even liberal economists like myself grudgingly accept the

conclusion that a responsible Fed must sometimes raise interest rates in

order to limit the number of jobs and maintain a suitably high rate of

unemployment. But the scene remains an ugly one: when the Fed acts to

cool off an overheated economy, what that literally means is that a

group of comfortable men and women in suits are deliberately acting to

limit the job prospects of some of their worst-off fellow citizens.