If one wants to see what it looks like when the Federal Reserve has enabled the US government to become completely irrelevant in a world in which fiscal policy is completely meaningless and all that matters is how high the S&P500 is on any given day courtesy of trillions in monetary policy injections stimulating "confidence" and the wealth effect, then look no further than this article by Politico recapping [5]the bad blood in Congress among the four feuding leaders.
First Reid:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid privately told fellow Democratic senators this week what he really thought of Speaker John Boehner.
“He’s a coward,” Reid angrily said, referring to Boehner’s private push for federal health care contributions for lawmakers and their staff. Boehner later backed legislation to end those subsidies in order to win points with House GOP conservatives. “He’s a coward!” Reid exclaimed.
Next Boehner:
Asked to respond to Reid’s remarks calling the speaker a “coward,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said: “We have to work together if we’re going to get anything done, and all this bullshit — the name-calling, leaking private emails — just makes it harder to do the work the American people sent us here to do.”
On the "hurt feelings" between the two:
"Some recent stories have even suggested the speaker’s keeping government shut because I hurt his feelings,” Reid told reporters Thursday. “If that’s true, I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings."
Then their aides:
Mike Sommers, Boehner’s chief of staff, described David Krone, Reid’s top aide, as “a snake” after Sommers’ emails were leaked detailing how the speaker secretly sought to protect federal contributions to staffers’ and lawmakers’ health insurance coverage. POLITICO reported the emails just as Boehner was pushing a House GOP bill to keep the government running in exchange for slashing those very same subsidies.
There is much more on the teenage girl convention in the full Politico [5]article but the gist is beyond simple: just like the Fed hinted it will not taper because of a dysfunctional Congress (and was proven right), the Congress has been increasingly more dysfunctional because it knew the Fed would not Taper (and was proven right), and Mr. Chairman "could get to work [6]."
Perhaps instead of the petty childish squabbels between the politicians which make for great primetime melodrama by partisan TV echo-chambers, the country could finally address the main issue at play: the more the Fed intervenes by centrally planning the US, and global, economy, the more irrelevant the stooges shown below become.
Or rather, the more irrelevant they are exposed as having been all along.
Because in a world of Dow Jones 36,000, who needs any fiscal policy?