Note that as usual, the Fed and the New York Times reporter both take for granted that Fed stimulus can have only positive effects on employment. The net result of Fed activity from 2000-2007 (the boom years!) was zero new breadwinner jobs. Zero. But now we are to look to the Fed for relief.

The problem with the “recovery,” according to the Fed officials referred to in this article, is that the Fed has paused too much when carrying out its policy. It isn’t the policy itself, of course. It isn’t the approach the Fed has taken since the days of Greenspan, manipulating the economy in order to get certain economic indicators looking good while the underlying base continues to rot, or providing artificial stimulus to the stock market in order to make investors feel richer so they’ll borrow and spend more (the so-called “wealth effect”). No, the problem is that the Fed hasn’t pressed quite hard enough.