Posted on 11/21/2010 9:39:15 AM PST by deniss60
Fed chairman Ben Bernanke's big speech... leaves U.S. policymakers off the hook and takes their focus further away from the free-market reforms within their control to make -- the policy changes that would do much more to save what's left of the U.S. economy than anything China might do.
Bernanke would have been more constructive taking direct and sustained aim at U.S. policymakers in both parties -- it's their bad policy moves and avoidance of tough decisions over more than 30 years that's responsible for America's economic underperformance.
The metaphor that comes to mind is of an overweight runner blaming the fact he keeps coming in dead last on a few cheaters taking stimulants. Those other runners will eventually pay for their drug abuse in future races. Wouldn't Mr. Overweight be better off losing weight? And why aren't other racers complaining about the cheaters to the extent we are?
...how is more money printing the real solution to this problem? What good has it done for the U.S. economy so far? Why stop at printing around $600 billion out of thin air? Why not let her rip and add another $1.2 trillion, $2.4 trillion, $4.8 trillion?
There is no free lunch....
[...]
The only positive in all this is that America's politicians are losing their margin for policy error and folly...
Generating economic growth the old fashioned way -- by earning it and improving our business climate -- is becoming one of the few options left. The only question is, how long will it be before the option of improving the business climate -- inconvenient and painful for many politicians -- becomes the only viable one left and whether the U.S. will be too badly degraded at that point, too much of a banana republic, to fix itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at seekingalpha.com ...
China is a scapegoat for what we should be doing to clean up our own mess.
ping
Actually, my scenario is that as the $600 billion slides in, and the dollar starts to slide against the Euro...Soros appears in Rome, London, Paris and Frankfurt to bet on the currency futures, and whatever magic number that the US thought that they could safely slide to....whips right by and they continue right on down...maybe $1.75 per Euro.
Folks start to get worried, and some others jump on the Soros bandwagon to bet on the dollar sliding more. Then around $2 per Euro...the US has to jump in with a trillon to save the dollar, but it’s too late.
Soros walks away with $100 billion (maybe even $200 billion), and the US economy by December of 2011 is totally destroyed. Oh, and by the way...all of the economic events to help collapse the banks and create all of this banking disaster? It’s been in the works for fifteen years by Soros and his team. Even the choice of the Fed chairman, the education of Obama at Harvard, and the handling of the Senate Banking Committee....all planned by Soros.
We’ll all have a laugh in the spring of 2012 as we have worthless 401K accounts and wonder how we pay for our house.
What the Federal Reserve is up to, and how we got here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k
Quantitative Easing Explained
Brilliant package. I wished it was only fiction. Maybe if I had a nice beard I could be as powerful as the Ben Bernank.
” Generating economic growth the old fashioned way — by earning it and improving our business climate — is becoming one of the few options left. “
Since this option depends on a significant number of policymakers developing sense *and* gonads, the far more likely option will be to continue kicking the can down the road, in hopes that they will be retired and holed up in their gated, guarded, communities - before they run out of road....
I wonder if that is really Bernanke or Soros wearing a Bernanke mask....
put me down as the sole vote in favor of QE.
Because...?
Bernanke is wrong only if you assume the he is trying to help the economy. It makes much more sense if he is trying to hurt the economy.
So Bernanke and the Fed trying to do something constructive for the economy (to help businesses and consumers “refi” at lower rates while they can last) with whatever few tools left in the Fed’s disposal is called wrong because “it leaves U.S. policymakers off the hook and takes their focus further away from the free-market reforms within their control to make”?
That’s a twisted “cause and effect” logic. Somebody is trying to take the focus off the politicians and push it onto Bernanke and the Fed, but it’s not Bernanke himself who is doing it. Fed’s monetary policy doesn’t usually take the focus off the politicians... it’s the politicians, the “leaders” and people who follow them who made Bernanke, the Fed and QE2 the focus of scorn, to divert attention from their accountability and culpability in the mortgage fiasco and consequent financial meltdown.
If some political “leaders” stopped following Barney Frank’s finger pointing at the direction of the next scapegoat in the making (currently the Fed and Bernanke) and instead kept focusing on the root causes of the Great Recession and incessant government spending, there would not be a focus on the Fed and monetary policy by hoi polloi, who suddenly became “experts” in monetary policy.
It’s a neat trick by politicians to take the people’s attention and focus off of them by finding the latest bogeyman in Bernanke, but why do conservatives and Republicans think it is a good idea to join then and start attacking their natural ally, especially with phony arguments? The “populist” knee-jerk reflex, spurred by Ron Paul and blogs like ZeroHedge, BusinessInsider, MarketInsider etc.?
Having to defend later the wrong actions and statements based on getting the facts and causes and efects wrong and sticking with them in the face of facts being wrong is not a way to educating the people (especially non-ideologs “independents) and is not a winning formula for 2012.
See:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2629966/posts?page=23#23 - Bernanke: stop calling it QE! - FR, 2010 November 19
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2629966/posts?page=33#33 - Bernanke: stop calling it QE! - FR, 2010 November 19
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2628909/posts?page=4#4 - 10 Reasons You Should Not Waste Your Money On Film ‘Inside Job’ - FR, 2010 November 17
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2628017/posts?page=20#20 - Weaker Dollar Seen as Unlikely to Cure Joblessness - FR, 2010 November 16
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2626029/posts?page=32#32 - Bernanke’s relationship with GOP deteriorating over Fed decisions - FR, 2010 November 12
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2626029/posts?page=24#24 - Bernanke’s relationship with GOP deteriorating over Fed decisions - FR, 2010 November 12
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2624051/posts?page=22#22 - Fed Policy: Another Wealth Transfer to Wall Street - FR, 2010 November 10
Should not we start getting our attention back from Bernanke and the Fed, and start focusing like a “laser beam” on telling and explaining to people a simple story of GSEs and public-private enterprises and the political “fat cats” who enrich themselves and their friends that run them and the dangers of “political solutions” to non-problems (like “climate change”) and the Congress and Administrations who spend and borrow their citizens’ money “into prosperity”?
Another one:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2623223/posts?page=139#139 - Palin to Bernanke: ‘Cease and Desist’ - 2010 November 09
He needs to be led away in handcuffs to stand in front of a thoroughly-perforated masonry wall.
To quote Curly Howard, "LOOK! Woodpeckers!!!"
Soros, Other Major Money Managers Report Positions - CNBC, 2010 November 15
Soros has said several times this year that gold is "the ultimate bubble." "I called gold the ultimate bubble which means it may go higher," Soros explained in September at a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York. "But it's certainly not safe and it's not going to last forever." ... Soros does not typically explain his quarter-to-quarter moves. A spokesman was not immediately available for comment. ..... < snip > < snip > ..... Soros trimmed positions in miners including Barrick Gold , Great Basin Gold and Newmont Mining . He held unchanged large positions in NovaGold Resources and Kinross Gold . However, he call options on 705,000 shares of the SPDR Gold fund .
Yes, boom-bubble-bust cycles are similar despite the underlying commodity or asset (or trading mechanism) and always follows “it’s different this time”...
The only real differnce between these cycles is who and how many the pop will affect when the bubble bursts, and who / what will be made to be a scapegoat.
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