Interesting article on the ways it worked and the ways it failed, I just laughed hard at the way it worked... my take on it..... 1. Stock market skyrocketed making the wealthy even more wealthier, did it do much for the average person who may have 100 shares of Disney or General Electric, nah don't think so, they weren't able to sell stock after the huge increase in stocks and go out and buy lavish items like new 6 figure autos, a down payment on an island somewhere and nice artwork, however the wealthy did!!! 2. Commodities surged only separating the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor as the average family saw the price of goods soar and gas at the pump in some areas reach over $4.00 a gallon, also caused many, many companies to pass on the increased prices to consumers. Nothing like $4.50 for a loaf of bread and $17 for Tide detergent!!! 4. Prevented a "lost decade" like Japan had???? Well all I can say is that the US is in a "lost decade" dont believe everything that you read, this economy is completely lost since the beginning of QE1 and will be lost for many more years, decades to be exact!!!!!!! 5. Wealth Effect, again a wealth effect only for the extremely wealthy everyone else was left behind as usual, nothing new here! Where it didnt work!!!! 1. Housing is still broken, no fucking way!!! You dont say, this is obvious, I have been saying since the release of stimulus that the housing sector will be broken and stay broken for decades or longer, nothing can fix the housing collapse, the best way to fix it was to let the entire housing market collapse and start fresh but that didnt happen because Bubble ben bernanke thought that wouldnt be the best bet, you know to let the free markets work, so he insisted on propping up the housing sector which in terms is only causing more problems, thanks Bubble ben bernanke! 2. The job market is broken, another no fucking way, you dont say, as I said years back you CANNOT force jobs on a slowing economy, I dont care how many trillions you spend you CANNOT force jobs on an economy, PERIOD. Of course no one understands this as they still try to force jobs on a slowing economy. I did hear 2 months ago McDonalds was hiring 50,000 people. Hmmmm, way to jump start an economy with plenty of minimum wage paying jobs!!!! 3. Inflation, well of course BUBBLE ben bernanke the creator of ASSET bubbles is saying its Transitory just to shut everyone up and make it sound like he knows what hes talking about when in reality all he did was create inflation over the last couple of years with his easy money policies and historical low, low, low, low interest rates! 4. Dollar destruction, of course its in everyone best interest to support a stronger dollar right Bubble ben bernanke and sidekick Geithner, but what they are saying are just lies, if they wanted a stronger dollar they would take the initial steps to support a stronger dollar and they arent even coming close to doing so, they are lying when they say they support a stronger dollar! Thats some of my take on the whole process of where QE2 worked and failed, article is down below. Fed Scorecard: Five Ways QE2 WorkedâAnd Where It Failed Published: Thursday, 30 Jun 2011 | 2:43 PM ET Text Size By: Jeff Cox CNBC.com Staff Writer Quantitative easingâwhich ends Thursdayâeffectively reached some of its goals and badly missed at others, but the unprecedented government intervention programâs final legacy is far from being written. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke launched the program with hopes that it would create a âwealth effectââa rise in asset prices that would help convince Americans that the financial crisis had passed and better days were ahead. No doubt there has been a considerable rise in a variety of assets, and if youâre lucky enough to own them you probably did quite well in the eight months since the central bank launched the second wave of easing, known as QE2 in market lingo. But if you were one of those stuck in the mud of the housing market downturn and jobs slump, you didnât do nearly as well. A look, then, at five areas where QE2 workedâand five were it failed. WHERE IT WORKED 1) The Stock Market Soared. Yes, thereâs that. Major indices last summer had fallen 17 percent from their April 2010 cycle highs and it looked like there was little relief in sight. But after Bernankeâs Jackson Hole speech in late August and subsequent official QE2 launch on Nov. 12, it was a different story. The Nasdaq jumped 29 percent, the S&P 500 [.SPX 1320.64 13.23 (+1.01%) ] rose 25 percent and the Dow industrials surged 23 percent. So if you are part of the 20 percent of the people who own most of the stocks, you saw a wealth effect indeed. 2) Commodities Climbed. Certain commodities, like oil [LCOCV1 111.80 -0.60 (-0.53%) ], copper and, for a while, silver [XAG= 34.65 -0.11 (-0.32%) ], saw moves that could only be described as parabolic. The connection to QE2 was undeniable: All that money-printing debased the dollar, in which commodities are valued. So cheap dollars equate to strong commodities, simple as that. The CRB index rose 11 percent while the dollar fell 10 percent during QE2. Thatâs a pretty straight line. 3) A Boost for Exports: See previous item: Cheap dollars make for cheap exports, and commodity-driven stocks led the market rally. Energy rose 45 percent while materials surged 31 percent. Multinationals prospered and set the stage for a move to big-cap stocks in 2011 and beyond. 4) Prevented Japan: More specifically, QE2 put a halt to fears that the US was heading towards Japanese-style deflation. By pumping enough liquidity into the markets, and doing so sooner rather than later (i.e. Japan to its 1990s recession) Bernanke was determined to avoid a âlost decade.â Of course, this approach had its consequences, which weâll discuss shortly. 5) Created âWealth Effectâ for the Wealthy: In summary, if you had the resources to run the short-dollar/long commodities/long stocks trade, and had the dexterity to get in and out at the right times, you had one whale of a wealth effect. WHERE IT FAILED 1) Housing is Broken. In a CNBC interview Thursday, Tobias Levkovich, chief market strategist at Citigroup [C 41.64 0.14 (+0.34%) ], insisted that âQE2 was never designed to drive the housing market.â Wrong. In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post just before the QE2 launch, Bernanke was clear about his goals: âEasier financial conditions will promote economic growth. For example, lower mortgage rates will make housing more affordable and allow more homeowners to refinance.â But the housing market is now in worse shape than the Great Depression, and even the rosiest projections are for a flattening and finding some bottom in pricing. So all that rate-cutting, dollar-cheapening and market manipulation still hasnât cured real estate. 2) The Jobs Market is Broken, Too. Yeah, and thereâs that. QE2 liquidity was supposed to âspur spending,â âlead to higher incomesâ and create a âvirtuous cycleâ that would âsupport economic expansion,â according to the Bernanke WaPo piece. Um, no, no, no and no. Companies have hoarded cash, income has lost traction to inflation, and GDP is 1.9 percent while unemployment is stuck at 9.1 percentâlower than when QE2 started but actually trending higher. 3) Inflation May Not Be âTransitory.â Bernanke repeatedly has called food and energy price pressures from inflation âtransitoryâ and likely to reverse. He has been somewhat right on the energy call, but food prices are moving consistently and in some cases dramatically higher, while other areas of the economy are catching up as well. Inflation is trending at 3.6 percent now, and that doesnât include what is expected to be a coming surge in rents, which make up 40 percent of the Consumer Price Index. Inflation as QE2âs enduring legacy is Bernankeâs biggest nightmare. 4) Dollar Destruction: See commodity price and inflation entries above. The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of foreign currencies, has moved in an almost perfectly inverse fashion with commodity prices, which in turn are driving inflation. Hereâs where it gets really scary: The Fed has almost no wiggle room to raise interest rates considering how much debt is weighing down the governmentâs balance sheet. But if inflation keeps building, so will pressures to raise rates and support the dollar [.DXY 74.39 -0.31 (-0.41%) ]. In that case, Bernanke will find himself in a brutal no-win situation. 5) Interest Rates Are Actually Higher: A real wild card whose significance also is yet to be known. Rates are still lowâunnaturally low, some might say. The $600 billion worth of Treasury buying plus another $80 billion or so in Permanent Open Market Operations drove prices lower and rates higher. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note actually has risen from the 2.76 percent level when QE2 started and the 2.66 percent at the time of Bernankeâs Jackson Hole speech. If the stock market rally keeps going and investors continue to ditch Treasurys, interest rates could spike and create even more problems for the debt-laden government.