Prattling Before the Pratfall

A fairly regular topic here is the crisis in rural healthcare. In the fifteen years I was traveling for my old job, I visited many small, regional hospitals. That part of my working life ended in the mid-90’s, and since then the difficulties in providing medical care in rural America, for both acute and chronic conditions, have gotten much worse. The PBS NewsHour has started a series on the difficulties facing administrators, clinicians, and patients.

Frontline has this timely report called ‘Age of Easy Money’.

My position is that the Fed needs to add a third mandate to its duty of maximizing employment while keeping inflation in check. It’s my contention that to meet those two goals, the “other inflation” — Wall Street — also needs to be kept in check. Otherwise, you end up with what we have now. Neel Kashkari has exactly the opposite opinion, as heard at this point in the documentary.

There’s an implicit threat in what Kashkari says, as if he’s speaking on behalf of investment bankers — Hurt the rich people on Wall Street, in any way at all, and regular people will suffer.