Anyone can see commodity prices are no longer transitory. This dumb ass is killing us. Every other central bank is raising rates. Screw wall street investment banks, let em mannage on their own, quite running to help these stupid don't know how to run a business clanish dopes.
What about the price of your home? Everyone knows that home prices aren't allowed to go down, it makes people feel less rich.
Here in southern california housing is plummeting and gas prices are already close to $5.00 a gallon. Grocery bills are through the roof. Helicopter man has no credibility. First he said housing is contained last year. Then he said a weak dollar will not cause inflation. Only when you travel overseas will you feel the effect of a weak dollar. He then said that commodity prices should be contained as the economy slows. Hmm, commodity prices are going ballistic. Now he is saying he supports a strong dollar. I certainly hope so, but you have to wonder what he is going to do in an election year.
Bush said he support strong dollar and has a strategy for it as well. And we all know how well it works. The strength of the dollar increase a whopping negative (-) 50%.
We seem to be operating under the assumption that its better to do something than to do nothing even if its senseless Housing still needs to fall and the banks and brokers business models are broken. Allowing a massive structural rise in inflation does nothing to help either of these concerns. How many people are thinking about buying a house now that gas in going through the roof? Does Ben realize that we've had an unsustainable increase in credit?
Presidents rarely replace FED heads before they are ready to retire. it was set up to be a non partisan group. If a new Admin picked a new FED every time it would be tough to work that way. The FED has one job, and one job only. Steady growth with contained inflation. Obviously those goals are at odds with each other now. BUT, this was of Greenspan's making, and everyone in Washington knows it. Bernanke has his hands tied. he can either put the breaks on inflation and the dollar drop, which send the economy into a deep recession, or try to get both goals limping along as long as possible. He chose the latter unfortunately. I wish they would just get it over with and have the damn recession to clean out the excess. We have cyclical recessions for a reason. I am afraid we may try to do the managed growth thing at all costs and go into a ten year spiral like Japan did.