I have a crazy aunt. Don’t get me wrong—I love her and we’re very close, but she’s crazy. I don’t know if she’s always been crazy or if that was a natural outcome of raising three boys, but the result is undeniable. She’s tough, has high expectations, and isn’t afraid to bluntly tell you when she sees room for improvement. If my uncle misses a button on his shirt, “For the love of God, Steve, get your shit together.” Seat her toward the back of a family wedding reception and you’ll hear about it for the rest of your life. Never, and I mean NEVER, forget to put a lime in her Corona.
The point is that when something is awry, there’s immediate feedback aimed at resolving it.
When I think about the problems facing our country—you don’t need me to list them, just flip on the news for five seconds and you’ll be bombarded—I think of my crazy Aunt Susie. Every issue has impassioned crusaders demanding immediate action. Let’s examine one closer to my area of expertise: the Federal Reserve.
When Kevin Warsh was named Fed chair, the crusaders were wringing hands and sounding alarms, ready to defend the noble cause of Fed independence.
In response to Warsh’s nomination, Senator Mark Warner said, “It is difficult to trust that any chair…selected by this president will be able to act with the independence required of the position.”
Economist Paul Krugman took a sharper tone, calling Warsh “a political animal” and his nomination “a humiliating day for the Federal Reserve.”
Elizabeth Warren, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, described Warsh’s nomination as “an invitation for corruption and economic catastrophe.”
To be fair, the stage for this fight had already been set by the president’s declaration that “Anybody that disagrees with me will never be the Fed Chairman!”
Debating the merit and tenor of these critiques is as pointless as arguing with my aunt. The important point is that the threat to Fed independence drew immediate pushback.
Fast forward to last week, when Chairman Warsh and the rest of the voting members of the FOMC unanimously delivered the first interest rate hike since 2023, directly opposing President Trump’s demands for lower interest rates and reaffirming the Fed’s commitment to reining in inflation.
Public outrage didn’t cause the rate hike. But the episode demonstrated two safeguards working simultaneously: a culture quick to sound the alarm and an institution strong enough to follow its mandate. The Aunt Susie-like brashness is an American trait. And the institutional safeguard is exactly what our forefathers designed: power scattered among branches of the federal government, states, agencies, financial markets, and ultimately voters. One raises the alarm; the other creates multiple opportunities for correction.
The safeguards are also why the political pendulum in our country never stops swinging—boundaries get tested, lines eventually get crossed, and overreach plants the seeds of political reversal. Our neurotic nation is in a perpetual state of chaos. And though the fights are loud, the results are often quiet. While the country argues endlessly about what is broken, many of the outcomes we care about steadily improve.
At 4.1%, unemployment is lower today than every single month from February 1970 through September 1999.
Before 1983, the US experienced a recession roughly every four years, and they lasted an average of about 18 months. Since then, recessions have occurred once per decade and lasted an average of nine months.
Life expectancy, household net worth, cancer mortality, traffic safety, crime rate, even the quality of the air we breathe have all improved over time. By most empirical measures, there has never been a better time to live in America.
Not every alarm is warranted, not every fight is productive, and sometimes real damage is done before correcting course. Yet progress continues. So why do things feel so messed up? Maybe it’s because we’re like an inexperienced luger hurtling down the track, sloppily banging into the walls as our only method of course-correction. It’s not pretty. But as we careen into the future, full speed ahead, I think we’ll find ourselves maintaining a path of progress.
Paradoxically, America often looks most dysfunctional while its safeguards are working. We don’t always arrive at the right answer, and we almost never arrive there quietly. But America’s unique ability to argue, overreact, and correct itself without breaking apart is a strength, not a weakness.
Somehow, my aunt’s craziness is endearing. I can’t say the same for our neurotic nation. Crazy Aunt Susie’s methods are unconventional and, to the uninitiated, maybe a little uncomfortable. Nothing wrong in her orbit goes unnoticed or unchallenged. But she has a happy marriage, three successful kids, and a family that loves her, so you can’t argue with the results. America’s neurotic approach to progress isn’t comfortable either, but you can’t argue with the results.
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