Pethokoukis says what?

AEI: First, credit the Fed, and its recently completed bond-buying program. Just compare the US and Eurozone economic performance in recent years, and you can see the power of active monetary policy in dealing with a massive demand shock. And why didn’t the 2013 tax hikes suffocate growth? (It actually accelerated on a fourth-quarter over fourth-quarter basis.) You can probably thank the start of quantitative easing, announced in September 2013. In the two years after QE, US job growth was 30% higher than in the two years before.

OK, he talks about the recent  growth, 3% plus on a YoY basis, and I have quarterly results plotted here (blue line).  Do the quarterly numbers correspond to QE? Sure do, but down below zero in 2011 when QE was rising (red line going up).  Then in Apr 2014 we get mixed results, One quarter good growth and one quarter bad.  The bad quarter was the Obamacare adjustment quarter.  Then the two past quarter growth perked up, but as you can see the QE was tapering.

I would say the QE had little to do with growth one way or the other.  The entire purpose of QE was to drive up the stock market so the California pension funds could recuperate.  QE was mainly a fraud, perpetuated by Bernanke to salvage the situation in California.  It was the usual bailout of the great Flounder state.