The Dallas Morning News reports that Richard Fisher, the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, has offered a striking take on the nation’s fiscal situation and unemployment rate.
At a meeting Tuesday, Fisher did not name President Obama directly, but did take aim at the president’s actions.
“Fiscal policy is still not an ally of economic growth,” Fisher said at the meeting of the Dallas chapter of Financial Executives International. “This is the pathology that I’m worried about right now. I’m not worried about inflation, I’m worried about the job destruction that’s taking place in our middle-income” groups.
Fisher added that Congress should focus on one thing: “Jobs, jobs, jobs.”
Fisher’s comments come at a time when the Obama administration is clearly not focused on jobs. If it is focused on anything, it is focused on dealing with its chaotic Obamacare law, and on trying to keep ahold of the Senate in this fall’s mid-term elections. Historically, the party of the president loses seats in mid-terms, and the Republicans just need to pick up a few seats to capture the Senate.
Fisher went on to note that Texas’ fiscal policy provides a sharp contrast to Washington’s.
“Without Texas, the United States has had job destruction over the past 12 years,” Fisher said. “We are the job-creating machine of the United States.”
Fisher also argued that liquidity is not the problem. “There is plenty of money available for business to work with.” Anti-growth policy, he said, is the problem.
Is Fisher advocating another government stimulus program? No.
The hawkish Fisher said those surplus dollars is why he’s been such a strong advocate of dialing back the nation’s economic stimulus program.
“The key thing to look at is that we have done something that has not been done before by the United States: We now have extended maturities; we used to have only short-term securities,” Fisher said. “This changes the challenge we have when we decided to exit” this policy.
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