Molly Ivins September 24

SAN ANTONIO — A whole bunch of people you never heard of — unless you're terribly familiar with the Federal Reserve Board's Open Market Committee — are reaching out and touching you today. The markets are atwitter. (This is an example of political anthropomorphism, as in "Washington is agog.")

Shall the Federal Reserve jack up interest rates? The problem, you see, is that a mere 6,830,000 Americans, as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fit into the following category: They want to work, they are available for work, they are looking for work, but they can't find work. This horrifies the Federal Reserve, as well it might — not because 6,830,000 Americans can't find work (we'll reality-check that number in a moment) but because it thinks 5.1 percent unemployment is too low. You see.

Great gravy! With only 6.8 million people unemployed, employers might have to raise pay in order to entice workers to take particularly unpleasant and unremunerative jobs! Which would be horrible, you see. It would be horrible because there might be this ripple effect, with wages being raised all up and down the economic food chain. People would make more money! They'd spend more money! The economy would grow at a faster pace! It would be awful, you see.

Now those of you who have been listening to politicians of late are totally out of the loop. Here's President Clinton bragging that the economy is just zooming along, all because he courageously cut federal spending and raised taxes on the rich. And here's BobDole, the man with one name, complaining loudly that the economy is not growing nearly fast enough, any fool could make it zoom along even more rapidly by cutting taxes 15 percent for everyone (without a single cut in more than 75 percent of all federal spending).

These guys are economic nincompoops; our Federal Reserve Board, composed of people none of us have ever heard of, knows better. They want to slow the economy down, you see. In the world of the Fed (as we cognoscente call it for short), it's bad when the economy grows fast, and it's worse when everyone can find a job. You see. Because these conditions are believed to cause inflation, which the Fed hates worse than anything. Inflation means that rich people's money is worth less and is especially bad for creditors, those make money by loaning money to those of us who have to borrow money. Got it?

According to The Wall Street Journal, today's secret meeting (all Fed meetings are secret; everything it does is secret) is fraught with intrigue.

"Some personal and political issues are ... in play. Last week's leak of confidential information — a wire-service report that eight of the 12 Fed district banks want to boost the discount rate — was seen by some as an effort by inflation hawks to bully Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan into raising interest rates."

This is terrible news. The idea of those dreadful hawks trying to bully that nice Alan Greenspan, who's the only Fed person whom any of us have ever gotten a look at. Greenspan is the one who occasionally appears before Congress and speaks in Delphic language about what it all means. We admire the artistry with which Greenspan makes the actions of the Fed perfectly incomprehensible to everyone.

National Public Radio read several statements by Greenspan on Monday of such awesome unclarity that it was almost divine. Entire sentences maximizing the opacity of the present situation, not to mention the obscurity of the potential futurity of the monetary position, particularly as it relates to the ineffable incomprehensibility of absolutely anything. At home, we call this BS.

On the other hand, according to the Journal, it can be argued (by some) that "the economy is too hot." This arguably terrible news was perceived (by some) when news came that "August housing starts soared." Don't you just hate when that happens? Further explains the Journal, "And at 5.1 percent, the unemployment rate is already below what many consider to the 'natural' or sustainable rate."

I've always wanted to bring good news to the many, and now I can.

Dear Many: The real unemployment rate is higher than 5.1 percent. There are more than 6.8 million Americans sitting around out there doing their patriotic duty (or at least keeping the bond market happy) by not being able to find work. The reason we know this is because the Bureau of Labor Statistics arrives at this "unnatural" 5.1 percent by telephoning 50,000 households every month to find out if the people there are employed.

Dear Many: Many of those who are unemployed do not have telephones. In fact, they don't even have households. If you would like to see them doing their patriotic duty, I recommend that you find the local day-labor market in your town or city (two blocks west of Congress and the river in Austin, Texas) and go down there between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. any weekday or Saturday. You will see several hundred men standing there in a parking lot while various kinds of contractors cruise by in pickup trucks. Hundreds of men wave at the contractors and shout: "Hey, mister! Hey, mister! I'll do anything, mister. Hey, mister, I got my own lunch!"

Dear Many Who Worry About Inflation: The many who stand in the parking lot haven't even been statistics for a long, long time.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

COPYRIGHT 1996 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.