Nobody is accusing the Fed/Administration of having much sense and the likelyhood of a successful recovery is small. Obama will no doubt go down in history as a sort of Nero. The man who spent America.
Oh and the electorate has given him another 4 years ! Like the turkeys lining up for Thanksgiving. Goodbye democracy - it sucks ! Nice principles but felled by man's greed.
Great article. Basically proving that Fed intervention has been wrecking markets almost since its inception.
Great article. Basically "proving" that failure of the Fed to timely intervene in overheated markets has led to calamities since inception. I suspect this has been due more to belief in incorrect economic theory than any other factor. For example, failure to realize that the basic tenets of supply and demand economics don't function well unless supply and demand behave elastically, and belief that markets are efficient and move naturally to equilibrium, when in fact they are inefficient and tend toward disequilibrium, led to Greenspan's unbridled faith in unregulated markets. Thus he failed in regulation of margin rates and the mortgage industry. He was the regulator-in-chief who did not believe in regulation! This, in a nutshell, explains the Greenspan disaster. Bernanke, on the other hand, has so far been a breath of fresh air in as much as he has realized that Fed action during the depression made the economy gravely worse, and he does not want to repeat that mistake. Whether he still believes that markets will spontaneously move toward equilibrium remains to be seen. I suspect he has learned the lessons of the past, and if so, and assuming the U.S. Congress cooperates, he has an opportunity to go down in history as the best Fed Chairman ever. If he can recognize the failure of modern economic models to describe real markets and not repeat the mistakes of the past, he can become the Neil Armstrong of Central Banking!
he has a chance to go down as the initiator of rampant inflation in the US and the catalyst for the socialist revolution as the US drowns in euro style misery.
Yes, of course. We are all fallible. Even you zdreg. Especially when predicting a near future radically different from the present!