We have learned that monetary policy alone does not stimulate growth. Only fiscal policy, e.g. lower taxes along with tight money work. Think Reagan, Laffer and Volcker in the early 80’s.
The lying by big government and big business about the economy goes back to the days of Clinton and up through Bush until it became semi-official in 2008 with TARP and it has continued under Obama.
What happened in 2008 was a crash that has been covered up by the inflation of the currency making Wall Street’s numbers look good.
Bad things have happened in the last eight years including the double digit inflation rate for food (15 percent), not included in official stats from government which excludes food and gas prices.
There was a panel on a BBC World News show the other weekend (’Dateline London’) with one woman (a Portuguese journalist) saying the world has been going through its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
When George H.W. ‘read my lips, no new taxes’ Bush (41) broke his word and cut a tax increase deal with the Democrats around 1990, it was the beginning of many bad policies that hurt the economy from both Uniparties.
Fed monetary policy puts a pretty suit on a rotting corpse and then tries and convince people that everything is fine. Really. Never been healthier.
My take is that neither monetary nor fiscal policy can 'stimulate' growth, but either done poorly can hold it back. We've had pretty good (mho again) monetary policy w/ stable prices, but like you said we got just too much tax'n'spending going on.