How Many Words Does It Take to Say “Class War”?

An actual board game from the late 1970s

These days, America’s top economic officials tend to speak in unintelligible bureaucratic gobbledygook. But, once upon a time, there was a plainspoken White House economist, and he even had a sense of humor. He didn’t last.

Alfred Kahn was chastised by the White House in 1978 for speaking clearly and honestly about the looming possibility of a depression: “Too blunt… use softer words!” So Kahn started calling the downturn a looming “banana.” When banana industry lobbyists complained, he switched to “kumquat.”

In that spirit, let me warn you about an unemployment “taco” that the autocratic Federal Reserve system is cooking up for working families. The Fed (as it is called by jolly bankers who run it) says it is imposing “the restoration between supply and demand in the labor market.” They soothingly add that “there will very likely be some softening in labor market conditions.”

You can almost hear them humming Rock-a-bye Baby, but don’t nod off. As Bryce Covert, the insightful economic digger and truthteller recently explained, there’s nothing soft about the Fed’s arbitrary policy – it means “fewer raises and more people out of work… which means about 1.5 million people will lose their jobs.” She documents that, historically, such a jolt of unemployment will probably (get ready for scary words) “trigger a recession.” Or a “taco” if that makes you feel better.

The mumbo-jumbo of economists aside, what we have here is the same old power play of moneyed elites putting the jobs and wages of working families on the chopping block to jack up the exorbitant profits of monopolistic corporations. When the Fed bankers say they’re “restoring balance,” they mean restoring the power of corporate bosses to rule unilaterally over America’s workaday majority.

In plain language, this is blatant class war by the privileged few against the many.

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