Ohh, you have a BS in Financial Economics! While a good degree, I'm working on an MA in Economics, how's that for the e-peen. You can't deny the important influence of monetary policy on credit cycles. Greenspan famously lowered rates in 1998, and it led to a huge bubble with gigantic losses. At the top of it, he was not talking of irrational exuberance, it was talking of how important IT was to the whole economy, he was a full time cheer leader. He then talked of non-sense in 2002 of Japan-style deflation (really? the banks were in good health), and he used that as a reason to keep rates low until 2004! That's well known. He opposed regulation of CDS in 1999 too. The Fed was so great that Bernanke had to say over and over how everything was contained and sub-prime or housing not an issue. Greenspan was part of every bailout he could engage in. And in 1992, he advised Clinton not to use fiscal stimulus, because it would hurt confidence if the deficit was too large. Gee, I guess he forgot that fiscal austerity when the deficits were huge under Bush due to tax cuts and wars. All points that Greenspan was an incredibly shrewd politician working for the bankers, and no one talked back to him to see through his BS, bullshit that is. And let's not forget the biggest of them all, the Fed is the REGULATOR for holding banks, and what did they do, nothing. Greenspan even said as much that he was ideologically opposed to regulation. A regulator opposed to regulation. Gee, the Fed can't surely make the same mistake now that it has been given even more regulatory power, can't it! Those "economists" must be so smart and fair. Maybe some central banks are independent of their private banking oligarchs, but that's not the Fed. The Fed is everywhere where there is a bailout, follows after every crisis and works with every banker. What I saw in Greenspan was a puppeteer careful not to show his strings. Let's not even forget that we're not privy of old information of where the emergency loans were going, and they had to be sued for it.
My titanium stocks moved 500% too. OMG!!!! The FED is conspiring to control the world's titanium!!@@! OMG!!!! My AAPL moved up 500% in the past decade, the Fed is out to contorl iPods!!! For fuck sakes people, chill the hell out. All you conspiracy nuts sound the same. Spend less time crying and more playing BOTH sides of the market.
Why do people who solely blame bubbles and business cycles on human nature and not on central banks have such a problem with accepting the cyclicality of the general public's mood towards those same central banks regardless of their true responsibility for crises in the past. Tight credit people mad, easy credit everyone happy. If you can't handle that why not set up a Save the Fed rally? I'm sure you would make CNBC... As for myself most of my goldstocks are denominated in USD which has been acting like toiletpaper here so you could see why I would carry a grudge against Mr Bernanke and his stooges. On the other hand it's getting cheaper and cheaper to visit the US again perhaps I should come and visit you guys again and join one of those tea parties you hear so much about these days.