Aren't you the one who is always bitching about me being a shill for the Fed because I occasionally present arguments in favor of the Fed? Perhaps you should practice what you preach, hypocrite.
I'm no shill, people don't need to agree with me and they're entitled to their opinion, as long as it's an educated response. If I am going to debate with someone and their argument is 'i know you are but what am i' I'm going to shout them down bc that's an adolescent responce and that person deserves to be treated as such. You still haven't given any facts whatsoever on the matter of why you think he is such a big failure. So you are still absolutely useless in your posts. As far as my opinion on Bernanke, the Fed and the current situation, yes, I'm all for it, all for his policies and I think he's been doing what is necessary to jump start everything. Wether you want to believe it or not, the market was at 6500 at the bottom of the crash and if they didn't intervene it would be at 1,000 and we'd all be owned by china or we'd just start a war so we have something to do and someone to takeover. We werent going to move forward by letting everything collapse. It happened too hard and too fast. That being said if it weren't for a large majority of the public, you know people with no value who wish to just voice their useless opinions and then blame everyone and everything else when things dont pan out for them, we wouldn't have been in the real estate crisis that occurred in the first place. Blame it on Bush, blame the fed, blame Goldman, or whoever else you want to blame, but God forbid you actually took a moment to research facts and maybe understand that the mess is the people's and they're to blame, you might learn something. The country was crippled and although maybe not every decision that was made might have been the right one, its been 2 years, the market is just under 13k, companies are reporting great earnings, hiring is starting to build up, consumer sentiment is growing, spending is up, savings are up and although its my belief that the banks are being too strict on lending (or lack thereof), it has allowed a change on mentality for the american public. People are learning you have to actually have the money to buy something like a house or a car or a pair of sunglasses, and in order for you to actually have the money, you need to get off your fat lazy ass and get a job. You eat what you kill these days, whereas back when you can be a waiter making 15 grand a year and get approved for a 500k mortgage without even being a US citizen, everyone was just eating off the fat of the land, hell, they were eating stuff that wasn't even the fat of the land but they thought it was so they just kept eating. Then when it all turned upside down they wanted to blame everyone else. Republicans, Bush, the value of the dollar, real estate, banks, who ever but themselves. Its pathetic, moronic and they're all wrong. Bernanke had the balls to make a decision as he should and that decision was to drop rates and turn on the presses. People want to wince and cry poverty, the dollar is weak bla bla, inflation is coming and anything else under the sun. 2012 is on its way so we shouldn't have such a weak dollar policy, it'll ruin us, double dip recession. I mean honestly, where the f*#k do you morons come from and get your information? what kool-aid are you drinking?
Fair enough. Olias comes behind my posts with "Bernanke is doing fine". I got tired of it. If you want to accuse me of stooping to his level, then I guess I am guilty. Anyway, I did not become a Bernanke critic until about six months ago, as it is obvious to me that he is doing more harm than good by continuing to print money, discipline needs to be gradually brought in regardless of the consequences. He is taking cues out of Arthur Burn's playbook, it appears to me and they had to replace him with volcker to stop the bleeding. I am afraid the same thing is going to replay here 30 years later, but worse. That is the way I see it, the blind leading the blind. I would like to see a change in Fed Chairman. Time will tell if my view is right or wrong.
olias, you are a fed shill/apologist. only a complete and utter fool would believe what the federal reserve is doing is in the best interest of the country, or the world for that matter. by destroying the dollar (yes, it's your buddies at the fed doing that) they are driving up commodity and input cost for all business that rely on raw materials to make their goods - squeezing margins to the breaking point and forcing companies to pass these costs on to the consumer. but wait, it gets better! we dont consider it inflation because we remove pesky things like food and energy from inflation statistics - they're too volatile (and inconvenient). yet MIT's Billion Price Project or Shadowstats show inflation more around 9-10% than the CPI-U joke of 2%. in fact, if you follow the same inflation methodology of calculation we did in the 1980's, that is precisely where inflation would be today (9-10%). convenient, isn't it, that the government changed that to mask the growth in the money supply's effect. what about savers? you know, ol' ma and pa who live on fixed incomes and try to make it by all this hilariously transient inflation by use of their retirement savings? ah, screw 'em. that .025% they earn is plenty. greedy bastards, what do they expect? meanwhile, the fed monetizes the debt by purchasing treasuries from ol' turbotax timmah after he issues them - oh wait, first the middle men, the primary dealers, get to play "Flip That Bond!" by borrowing at next-to-nothing, buying from timmah, selling back to the Fed and taking a commission on top of it. wait, wait...sorry. did i say monetize the debt? ben, are we monetizing and printing money? it's so hard to tell because in one 60 minutes clip you say we're not, but back in 2009, you said what you are doing now IS printing money on the same god damned television program (also in the same link). ah hell with it, what's the difference? who cares if the latest week shows that insiders are selling 565 times the amount that insiders are buying? we've got a 100% S+P gain in just two years! can't we lay that credit on QE and the Fed? apparently uncle benny thinks so! in this meteoric rise in just about every asset class (minus the dollar, of course), risk has become mispriced. wait, no. it's not mispriced, it's malpriced. just like during the housing bubble when we were lending to every tom, dick and harry that made $.25 a week and selling them mc-mansions. hell, i remember greenspan coming on and telling everyone an ARM was the best thing since sliced bread. or how about when bernanke said there's no housing bubble? that one is always good for a laugh. was the fed largely responsible? you bet it was! and we trust these jackasses to get us out of the mess by running ultra-cheap money until "the foreseeable future"? Hahaha...! (note: i blame idiot americans taking out more than they could afford as well, but the central bank encouraged it). nevermind that the federal government (fannie/freddie) own all the junk now, or that Fannie needs another fucking 8 and a half billion?? oh, and this lovely quote from the bloomberg article you posted essentially makes my point on risk: i wonder why this is? this is nothing more than an agenda to take from the taxpayers and give to wall street - on a monumental scale.
hiring is starting to build? the last BLS number was a joke! 60,000 was McDonalds and 175,000 was the Birth/Death adjustment! surely you jest. consumer confidence? are you referring to the bloomberg article that stated http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...to-three-month-low-on-surging-fuel-costs.html confidence falls to a three month low on surging fuel costs?
Bernanke is worse than Greenspan, he is a total disaster . Honestly, I thought he was a liar and knew everything he was doing, but now I think that not only is he a liar, but he doesn't really understand markets and how they react to his experiments. He seems to be living in his own academic world of equations like most of the Fed economists, they are all disasters . Of course it will be like Greenspan, everything will fall apart after he's gone .
The original of TARP was to prevent banks from going bankrupt and cripping credit. it was never intended to increase asset prices for wall street crooks. Never handover the keys to crooks. Power tends to corrupt, Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Fed has too much power than it needs. The power of the Fed is granted by the people(congress).
Thanks to Larson, Tsing Tao and El Cubano for keeping the sanity. I'm finished with debating Olias or this newest stooge/shill SCI New York. It should be pretty obvious that anybody employed in the F.I.R.E. sector of the economy will be a de-facto Bernanke bootlicker. Just as any union employee will vote Democrat.
I had a very long response and was too long and then it was gone so heres the abridged version. Fed isn't "destroying' the dollar. weak dollar economy is better for us, cheaper to pay back the massive debt were in. Companies are going to push costs off to customers no matter what, if prices were lower they'd still do it. Goods are valued at what individuals will pay for them. People pay 500 for iPads all day long and $4 for gas. They CHOOSE to, cant fault the companies for that. up until they're doing something illegal, companies can do what they want and charge what they want if someone is willing to pay it. ma and pa didn't save enough before retiring or didn't fully understand the true cost of living, so yes it is their fault, harsh it may sound but thats how it is. You can't fault institutions for taking advantage of whats there on your 'flip the bond' they're not doing anything illegal. doesn't matter if you don't agree with it, they're taking advantage of it, not their fault. Just like you can't fault large corprations for taking advantage of tax laws and tax breaks. They're there, might as well use them, not their fault you don't take advantage, they're not the bad guys. Blame the tax code or create a corporation and take advantage as well. yes we're printing money. And if you ask me crazy as it sounds I think we CAN print and spend our way out of this. Trades have 2 sides, if insiders are selling 565 times more than buying, someone is on the other side of the trade buying 565 times more. its all relative. you dont know the circumstances, could be huge profits, corporate growth, too many variables to zone in on something like that. Besides everyone knows zero hedge is a hugely negative bias, no matter how good the news is, they'll turn something bad out of it, although they do have a lot of useful info, just need to learn to read it properly without bias. I dont think risk is mispriced, I think asset classes had a boom, then got their asses kicked and now are trying to return to normalcy, people aren't used to the speed of which its happening so of course they throw up a caution flag, thats expected, but that doesn't make them right. Its not greenspan's fault the idiots buying houses and taking out ARMs had no idea what they really were. As the saying goes, a fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place. Hes not to blame. can't blame the bartender because you can't hold your liquor. Why would bernanke ANNOUNCE to the world that basically there is no santa clause? are you stupid? hes the Fed chairman, why would he WANT to induce a panic like that? it probably would have made the crash far worse because people would have really went mad. and of course it will be cheap money to the 'forseeable future' because he's not Nostradamus! no one knows how things will be in a year so why put yourself out there and timestamp something and put a gun to everyones head? he does that and we're back in panic mode and the last 2 years would be for nothing. He speaks and the world listens. So he's not gonna scream fire on a plane for a better seat. Central bank didnt encourage massive leverage from non sophisticated individuals, the leverage was there, you dont need to use it. Just bc you get a $100k credit limit doesn't mean to run down 5th avenue until it doesn't work anymore. Thats your own fault. And people need to really stop blaming wall street for making money. Thats like getting mad at a guy at the buffet line for eating 10 courses just because you can't. Thats not his fault. Now im not saying that I agree or disagree with that, bc for the record I'm not a fan of the institutions, but thats another conversation. but the facts are facts. freddie and fannie? scam artists if you ask me. but thats another topic.