[Mr. Jeeves]

Appalling hubris by Bernanke, but I guess that's in keeping with his past comments on "helicopter money". If this announcement wasn't authorized, Bush needs to keep this guy on a tight leash until the damage assessment is complete. All of those people in the South and Midwest who stand to get laid off from their Mississippi river traffic-dependent jobs if the river proves unnavigable aren't going to appreciate Pollyanna-ism by the Republicans at this time.

Even with as little as we already know, the storm's economic impact is going to be immense.

[AdamSelene235]

Ben "Helicopter Commander" Bernanke is a dangerous lunatic.

[atomicpossum]

He might be a good economist, but he ain't much of a spokesman.

[AdamSelene235]

U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.

-Ben S. Bernanke,Bush's Chief Economic Advisor, Deflation: Making Sure "It" Doesn't Happen Here

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. - John Maynard Keynes, Grave Digger of the British Empire

[McGavin999]

No, it's not. You see, the rest of the country will increase production of the construction materials that will be required to re-build. There will be thousands and thousands of construction jobs available, and as a result, thousands of support jobs available.

As for the actual cost of rebuilding, there will be a lot of tax dollars required, but that will just mean a diversion of funds previously set aside for foreign aid.

[loreldan]

Did you want him to tell everybody to start panicking? The market is watching everything everyone of importance has to say. Now is the time for calming voices. I don't think we're headed for doomsday anyway.

[Clemenza]

"Stay Calm. Do not panic. All is well."

[mercy]

BWA HWA HWA HWA !!!

This is exponentially worse than 9/11.

[pissant]

In the short term, you are correct. In the long term, the economy will expand because of the hurricane.