Given that mine is the dismal science, it is my role to cool the exuberance of investors at the news that the Fed will continue to print money rather than taper, with a bit of news that should worry them–the possible revival of the trade unions, long a fading force in the private sector.

Only some 11 percent of wage and salary workers are members of trade unions. The heaviest concentration is in the public sector, where about 36 percent of all workers are signed up with the unions. In the private sector fewer than 7 percent of workers hold union cards, down from an estimated 30 percent in 1958 and over 20 percent in 1980. The difference is unsurprising: Public sector unions can deliver the goods for their members. They make large contributions to the election campaigns of the politicians with whom they bargain, and the grateful politicians reciprocate by lavishing the unions with benefits that have bankrupted Detroit and loaded several states with pension obligations they cannot meet. Taxpayers foot the bill for the costs of this mutual back-scratching.