Karl Smith, clear and concise:

If the economy is running at maximum employment and the prices are moving in a steady and predictable fashion then the central bank has done its job. What happens to growth is ultimately not the Fed's concern....

Offering sympathetic sounding bromides about the need for policy makers to work together may make Federal Reserve officials feel better about themselves but it disguises the deeper truth that the failure of the US economy to reach full employment is their failure.

The erosion of skills, the decline in capital formation and the destruction of lives that stem from high unemployment is the doing of one policy institution.

The Federal Reserve knows exactly what it needs to do remedy this situation: commit to zero interest rates until nominal spending in the US economy is within 2% of its 1990- 2007 trend line.

That the Federal Reserve refuses to do this is a choice that it alone must answer for.