How would you have voted?

[Rambo35]

Minutes from the last Fed meeting showed that a significant amount of voting members wanted to do the right thing and scale back on stimulus. Some Fed watchers put the number as high as six votes or 50% of the FOMC in favor of a reduction in stimulus or tapering if you wish.

Assume for a moment you were one of the FOMC voting members, how would you have voted and why?

I would have voted to reduce stimulus and let the economy go its natural way which in the end would have been more cost effective, more efficient and would have allowed the economy to eventually go down to road of a sustainable recovery.

 

[Pharaoh]

I'd have voted to phase out QE as quickly as possible without putting the economy into a total tailspin. I'd prefer to go cold turkey, but the big banks and others are so addicted to it that this would probably result in a few too many failures too quickly for the economy to handle.

If you want to throw money into the economy, don't just hand it to banks so that they can give the executives bigger bonuses for losing money. Instead, look at some of the programs used during the Great Depression. The CCC and similar programs employed a lot of people desperate for jobs and built a lot of infrastructure, some of which is still in use today. Now that's an economic stimulus worth spending cash on.