He talks tough on inflation, says the Fed wants a strong dollar (don't we all? LMAO). Yet he doesn't hike rates. There is no way he will hike rates. Here's a guy who got pushed around by a rogue trader into panic cutting 75 bps because the futures were lower. Bernanke is a pushover and money printer. He hasn't met a printing press he doesn't like. The guy loves to give banks more and more money and has flooded the system with dollars and then says he wants a strong dollar. LOL. Foreigners are getting sick and tired of holding confetti money in the dollar with Bernanke printing like mad. Watch for new lows in the dollar in the coming years, there is too much of the stuff out there.
The current financial administration is truly pathetic - all talk, no action is exactly right. Paulson is another one - he has been jawboning on the "strong dollar" policy for the last year, to no effect whatsoever. It's amazing they don't realise that all this talk does is destroy their credibility. Traders aren't stupid. They can see if someone says X whilst doing Y, and they bet accordingly. Bernanke has no need at all to talk up inflation fears. If he believes it, all he has to do is raise rates a measly 25 basis points, and the market will listen. They should take a hint from Robert Rubin's stint as Treasury Secretary. Keep your mouth shut. Only talk when you are about to take decisive action, or to add power to your already convincing moves. Talk should be used as an enhancer of decisive action (or at the very least, to enhance a *credible* threat of decisive action), not a substitute for it. If you talk too much without backing it up, you become like the boy who cried wolf. The French foreign minister was right - Paulson, Bernanke and Bush haven't read their Machiavelli. They are a bunch of clueless amateurs who are making the American government look stupid as hell on the world stage.
If they were really worried about inflation, a falling a dollar and skyrocketing commodity prices they would have stepped in and did something by now, I think its pathetic that they speak such words about whats going on yet take no such action.
Talk about burying your heads in the sand. What a bunch of clueless ass clowns. Whats going on isnt acceptable at all.
Bernanke's tough inflation talk got the dumb shorts to cover their dollar short. Now the dollar is giving back almost all of the gains from yesterday against the euro. There will be no rate hikes this year, since bank stocks are down and he doesn't want to crush them to stop inflation.