Some will agree and some will disagree with my thread title but my personal opinion of Ben Bernanke is this: He is a gutless and wrong. My take on the economy is this: Stop bailing out free enterprise. Banks are big enough to take care of the loan situation. All banks have to do is restructure their own loans but they won't do that if they keep getting financial bail outs. Stop burring the US dollar. Cut some on the discount rate to banks to aid in restructuring loans but leave the Fed Rate alone. Keep the dollar strong to control commodity prices. Europe, China, and probably the other world markets are going to slow. Our cuts shouldn't rescue their growth. Global slowing would erase any risk of inflation but cutting the Fed rate and lowering the dollar, under our present set of circumstances, won't. The Housing Market was a HUGE bubble. It needs a year at least to shake itself out but not at the expense of creating the kind of economic upheaval the Fed is causing, now. Ben could even create another bubble if he isn't careful. Sure, if inflation becomes a concern the Fed could reverse course but that about face will make for more uncertainty in the governing power of the Fed and will lead to more economic upheaval. I don't have any financial reason to be upset; I didn't lose a dime in this economic slump because I saw it coming. I just wish I could have seen a Fed Chairman in charge who would have steped up and voted against lower the Fed Rate by the amount he did. Greenspan made some good moves and some bad ones. The housing bubble is on his head. So far, Ben has done nothing right in my opinion, other than easing the discount rate to banks, to correct that. Banks right now with the low mortgage rates should be climbing all over the refi market, but I bet they will drain the pockets of every homebuyer they can at the elevated rates and cry to the Fed when things are not working out. In my opinion, banks and financial institutions need to clean up their own mess. Pete