A radically financialized economy

It didn't happen overnight. The introduction of credit cards was a part of it. So too were NOW accounts. Then there were credit default swaps and collateralized mortgage obligations the repeal of Glass-Steagall and hedge funds and much more. Today nobody actually knows the difference, if any, between money and credit. At the website of the New York Federal Reserve Bank one reads: "In July 2000, the Federal Reserve announced that it was no longer setting target ranges for money supply growth. In March 2006, the Board of Governors ceased publishing the M3 monetary aggregate." What monetary aggregates mean anymore is a mystery. There seems to be a theory of sorts that it doesn't matter so long as the economy can be regulated through managing interest rates -- raising them to cool down price inflation and lowering them to combat unemployment. But to me, that is whistling in the dark. We have radically financialized the economy, domestically and globally, and nobody really understands it anymore.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/23/197469/obamas-major-economy-talk-comes.html#storylink=cpy