IN CONFIDENTIAL MEMO, TREASURY SECRETARY JANET YELLEN CELEBRATED UNEMPLOYMENT AS A “WORKER-DISCIPLINE DEVICE” – By Jon Schwarz (The Intercept) / Jan 24, 2023
Yellen wanted this to be the best of all possible worlds, but the best world she could conceive of was terrible.
IN JUNE 1996, Janet Yellen — then a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, later chair of the Fed herself, and currently secretary of the Treasury — wrote an extraordinary memo to then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. Anyone who wants to understand how the world works should read it, and thank Tim Barker, a historian who obtained it via the Freedom of Information Act.
Through a FOIA request, I got my hands on Janet Yellen's 1996 memo offering a theoretical explanation of why the decline workers bargaining power might allow for easier monetary policy. You can download the memo here: https://t.co/RiWpRNwczZ
— Tim Barker (@_TimBarker) January 19, 2023
What makes the memo so telling is threefold.
First, while expressed in abstruse technical language, it shares a perspective with the most radical left-wing critiques of capitalism. Yellen goes 90 percent of the way to proclaiming, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
CONTINUE > https://theintercept.com/2023/01/24/unemployment-inflation-janet-yellen/
