Another Voice About The Lack of Equity in the Two Tier Economy

The ever lovely, ever brilliant Gretchen Morgenson interviews Fred Hoenig, the retiring President of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank in today's New York Times.  Fred raises the problem we have been ranting about here for a long time, but from a different angle.  Here is the important part.  Then you can read the entire column online.

"Another important theme for Mr. Hoenig concerns the mistrust that has arisen as regulators provide favors to powerful institutions while asking other industries, and ordinary Americans, to accept less.
Ask farmers to accept fewer federal subsidies, or the housing industry to live without the mortgage tax deduction, or ordinary Americans to contemplate changes to Social Security, and they all push back, he says.
And many of these people say the same thing: “Why should I compromise when the largest institutions get bailed out and continue to get their bonuses?” he says.
POINT taken. If there were a sense that everyone, big and small, powerful and weak, would be asked to sacrifice, we might be able to agree on a way forward for the economy, Mr. Hoenig said.
“We have to bring a greater sense of equitable treatment,” he said. “When we do that Americans will say, ‘Yes, we are all in this together.’ ”
Mr. Hoenig does not yet know what he will do after leaving the Fed, but he aims to stay in public service. Let’s hope he lands in a job where some of his ideas can be put into action."

A version of this article appeared in print on August 14, 2011, on page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: Conventional Fed Wisdom, Defied.