Help wanted: Tough central bankers DAVOS, Switzerland (Click to read the entire article) The main challenge facing central banks is how to keep economic growth going without inflating the next bubble. Put starkly, that means jacking up interest rates from their current nonexistent levels, as Australia, Israel and Norway have now done. It also means halting the spread of cheap money, which has turned out to be the financial equivalent of crack cocaine. Weaning the world off the liquidity drug won't be easy. The two most important economies, America and China, are moving at different paces, perfectly exemplifying the two-speed recovery that seems to be taking hold. China and other emerging nations are zooming. The United States and Europe more or less remain stuck in neutral gear -- and face rising unemployment and a potentially crushing debt burden. Global financial markets have been further rattled by China's moves to tighten policy settings -- raising the amount of reserves banks must hold, for example -- at the start of 2010. The fear is that this could impede the stubbornly weak global recovery and curb spending in one of the few nations with a surplus of savings -- at the expense of countries like Australia. That nation's robust exports to commodities-hungry China is a chief reason the RBA could raise rates three times in a row in late 2009. By contrast, the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank likely will remain hunkered down on the sidelines until the end of 2010, unable to boost rates. (Conclusion: As beholden they are to the interest of Wall Street fat cats, neither Bernanake nor his European cohorts have the balls to jack up interest rates. They were ALWAYS one step late to the party and they were just as slow to leave the party when the building was burning. Frankly, they didn't even know there was a fire!)