When Yellen looks worried, you should, too

ON Friday, we might know whether there’s a reason Janet

Yellen is acting concerned. A couple of weeks ago, the Federal Reserve chair backtracked on her threat to continue aggressively raising interest rates. She hinted that rate hikes — of which there have been four in two years — would be coming more slowly than the Fed indicated.

Rate hikes are already coming at a glacial speed. Why is Yellen slowing them down even more?

That’s what the world was thinking, not me. I think Yellen is scared that the economy is about to crap out.

Not that it’s been going like gangbusters to begin with, but there was certainly hope back in January when

President Trump was inaugurated that the economy in July would be going a lot better than it actually is.

I set Friday as the day to check in on the economy via-à-vis Yellen’s stance, because that is when the Commerce Department will announce its first guess at how the na- tion’s economy fared in the second quarter. (And that’s what it is, a “guess” based mostly on estimates.)

The first quarter’s gross domestic product — which is the gauge most people use to measure economic activity — grew at an annualized rate of 1.4 percent.

Remember, that’s an annualized gain. To find out how much actual growth there was in the first quarter, you have to un-annualize it by dividing 1.4 percent by four — for each of the quarters of the year.

That makes actual first-quarter growth 0.35 percent. That means the economy was barely moving forward.

The New York Federal Reserve thinks Friday’s second quarter GDP number will improve to an annualized rate of growth of 2 percent — or 0.5 percent for the quarter.

The Atlanta Fed’s second-quarter GDP guess is 2.5 percent annualized.

Both are way down from earlier projections. Wall Street’s consensus is for 2.6 percent second-quarter growth annualized. Not one of those estimates is great. The Trump White House is looking to boost annual growth to 3 percent — a good but not wonderful number.

The Fed held its policy committee meeting this week and on Wednesday announced that it wouldn’t raise rates this time. It still says there will be gradual increases. The “experts” think the December meeting will probably be the next increase.

The Fed board also said job growth has been solid. The numbers that have come out from the Labor Department have definitely shown that, but much of the spring gain could have been due to wacky seasonal adjustments and other statistical trickery that will be corrected in coming months.

Also, the Fed said, economic growth is expected to pick up the pace. But that’s what it has been doing for 10 years now, but the pickup has been waaay too gradual.

And one last thing about the Fed: As expected, Yellen plans “relatively soon” to start normalizing its balance sheet by getting rid of the bonds it bought with phony money during its quantitative easing program.

But the Fed boss still has given no details on how that trick will happen. The Commerce Department is also going to announce a three-year revision of GDP figures on Friday. We’ll find out what the economy was really doing when Trump pulled off his miracle election victory.

The Democrats got laughed at this week when the party picked as its new slogan: “A Better Deal.”

Far be it from me to pick apart the works of the esteemed sloganeers, but that sounds just like a commercial from Papa John’s Pizza.

On that note, let me give my first opinion on the health-care debate — along with some advice for the Republicans who are now embarrassing themselves trying to repeal ObamaCare.

This is thinking big, but I’ll put it in the small space I have left.

Americans need to be able to get affordable health insurance. Medicare already gives that to people over 65 years of age, a group of Americans who are unable to pay a lot for insurance but most likely to need and use expensive health care.

And while the medical profession may not love it, insurance companies are falling all over themselves trying to get into the Medicare game by providing so-called replacement and supplemental policies.

So this system must work well enough for both the insurers and the customers.

And that’s mainly because Medicare already has buying power with millions upon millions of customers. Medicare is 52 years old, so it has a history of success. Build on that. The Democrats and Republicans should act like adults and come up with a way to expand Medicare to everyone at an affordable price.

Scrap Medicaid, which is provided through the states at a huge cost.

Can’t pay anything? The sheer number of Medicare enrollees under my expanded plan will make it easier to cover you.

Argue over the financial details of this Medicare expansion later. But agree now on what needs to be done. Call it Medicare Part O if the Democrats insist on keeping the Obama legacy. Or call it Medicare Part T if the Republicans want Trump’s initial on it.

Even call it Medicare OT to satisfy both — as well as to indicate how long this debate has been going on. Name it anything you want — just get the damned health-care debate finished before the healthy people in the country get bored to death and the sick people die from lack of medical attention.