New York Post columnist John Crudele doesn't exactly pull any punches when it comes to his view of the Federal Reserve chairwoman.
"Janet Yellen should be fired. Ready, aim, fired," he writes.
And what are her transgressions? First, "she’s the chief manipulator of U.S. financial markets," Crudele says. That puts her in the same position as her predecessors Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan, he says.
"Bernanke should also have been fired. Greenspan should have been tarred and feathered for the way he gave in to political pressure and allowed the housing and financial markets to blow themselves into bubbles."
Second, Yellen "was lying" when she said last week that "things are going well" for the economy, Crudele says.
"There have been a slew of disappointing economic reports lately. Durable goods orders in December were abysmal. Retails sales sucked," he writes. Consumer spending dropped 0.3 percent in December.
"Most of the housing market is still on its keister," Crudele notes. "Corporate earnings were weak in the quarter that ended Dec. 31 and look worse in 2015. . . . Our economy is growing so modestly that commodity prices are collapsing and gasoline is at a many-year low."
The economy grew 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter, slowing from 5 percent in the third quarter, and 2.4 percent for 2014 as a whole.
Yellen is "trying to justify an interest-rate increase later this year — which, in my opinion, probably won’t happen."
Paul Singer, CEO of Elliott Management, isn't too impressed with the economy either. "It is hard to imagine the American economy lighting up under [current] conditions," he writes in a letter to investors obtained by
CNBC.
That's the case "even without the gravitational forces exerted by Europe's travails, the strengthening of the dollar, the oil crash, Japan's highly uncertain path, potential economic changes in China, the uncertain event stream of Islamic jihad, Russian expansionism and continued chaos in the Middle East," Singer notes.
He believes change is unlikely in Washington, to the economy's detriment.
"President Obama gives no sign of wanting to work with Congress, and also gives no sign of wanting to pursue a different agenda," Singer writes. "Thus, the current tax and regulatory landscape is likely to remain in place at least for the next couple of years."
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