As Wall Street waits to hear Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's economic speech at this week's Fed symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Fed officials have been bickering publicly about how they should conduct interest policy in the weeks and months ahead.
Vice-Chair Stanley Fischer hinted that a rate hike remains on the table for 2016, suggesting that employment and inflation targets have been largely met.
San Francisco Fed President John Williams, however, has been making the case that the Fed needs to alter which aspects of the economy it is targeting in order to achieve maximum, sustainable growth.
In any event, economic policy, both at home, and abroad, needs to become more coordinated, more comprehensive, more coherent and more growth-oriented than it has been in any time in recent memory. And it needs to happen now!
In this cycle, historically low interest rates have already restored the segments of the economy that required the most help after the financial system collapsed in 2008.
Banks, corporations, households and even government, have repaired, to a great extent, their balance sheets while the extremely low cost of capital allowed for growth to emerge from the ash heap of the Great Recession.
GDP has eclipsed it 2007 peak, stocks remain near all-time highs while household net worth is at a record. Auto sales are running flat out and housing is rebounding.
Having said that, the Fed, and all the world's central banks, have thus far proven themselves unable, despite interest rates at zero, or below, to combat financial, technological, demographic and commodity deflation.
Zero interest rate policy, (ZIRP), quantitative easing, (QE), and negative interest rate policy (NIRP), in truth, cannot address the myriad issues depressing domestic and global demand and pushing down prices for many manufactured goods.