I can't wait for his helicopter to start dumping money over my house! Yippee!
I encountered a Brit expat at lunch yesterday, who has a business here in town, and he was fairly pleased that Bernanke was going to back off of the interest rate increases. I asked him where he had heard that, and he said one of the cable news outlets. I haven't heard this, myself.
My perception of the economy is skewed, as everyones is, by the performance in my region, which is southeast. We're still struggling with international competition, and new hiring is consistently counterbalanced by job loss in other areas. Unemployment is not at all bad, all things considered, around 5.1%, but things aren't exactly coming up roses here. Just sort of muddling along is the best description I can come up with. So, I tend to agree that backing off the consistent rate increases would be a good thing. But, we don't have anything close to bubble conditions with real estate here. Appreciation has been around 3% a year since the late 90s, up to this year; now, we're projected for arouind 7% on the year for 2005.
Continuing with historically low interest rates sounds like a good thing to me, in my own situation. But, it would likely make a painful correction in high-appreciation markets even more likely. So, I don't really know how to react to this, even if true.
Can somebody confirm that Bernanke is of this opinion?