Article Review #3

In this article, Stockman explains why he believes we are moving closer and closer towards an recession like the previous articles. His main reasoning is the collapse of commodities, capital spending and world trade. In this article Stockman specifically calls out the Fed for creating false data about our economy and Bernanke for praising the Fed's false success.  One point Stockman makes is that the Fed has manipulated data such as GDP growth rate and declining unemployment to make citizens believe that the economy is improving since the 2008 recession. Stockman also points out that the total global debt has grown from $40 trillion in 1994 to $225 trillion dollars in 2014. Furthermore Stockman bashes Bernanke for claiming the that the "labor market is close to normal" when in actuality virtually every job gained since December 2009 isn't a "new" job, but just a job regained since the economic crash in 2008. Bernanke also claims that the U.S. economy is growing at a faster rate than European countries because of the money the government printed to provide a stimulus for our economy. However, Stockman argues that the free money printed by the government will only increase the size of the financial bubble that is the global economy and that European countries have lower debt to GDP ratios than the United States. I agree with Stockman that Bernanke's decisions and the Fed's decisions are not beneficial to the U.S. or global economy. Stockman clearly shows how Bernanke is manipulating the Fed's data to make everything seem like our economy is growing, but really he is simply hiding the impending recession from the public. This Stockman article was the easiest of the 3 Stockman articles. However I would still give the article a rating of 2/3.