Dec

6

The current Fed's chairman, in my view, did much better than his predecessor in last night's "60 minutes" interview. This interview, though obviously well orchestrated, did project candor, clearness, lucidness. I haven't noticed a single slip-up, even when he had to touch on the most unpleasant and controversial subjects. Green-speak was always mired in smoke and mirrors– and always left listener completely puzzled and disassociated. Bernanke projects stark contrast– albeit Fed's task, as most policy making, may be doomed by definition…

Vince Fulco writes: 

I try to look at this from other angles, i.e. why would a "nice country boy from S.C." who understands the plight of his fellow citizens gun the hell out of asset markets with all the concomitant deleterious effects potentially setting us up for another mega boom/bust scenario? Could it be that the rot within the mortgage agencies and institutions (commercial banks both here and abroad) is so terribly bad regardless of what the accounting books say that he has no other choice? QE2 just seems way too blunt an instrument to be affecting employment decisions a few years out. I noticed the bad bank list hit a new high (or near high) over the weekend while the capital markets are whistling dixie. Two to three years into the last bank debacle, we were starting to see the light of recovery through RTC efforts but then again we weren't kicking anything down the road and addressing problems front and center.

Grasping at straws…

Gary Rogan writes:

In my view, the number one purpose of government is to prevent younger/stronger warriors or anyone else from taking anything from anyone else by force or in fact using force for any purpose on unwilling participants. The second purpose of government is to arbitrate and enforce contracts. There are no other real purposes, but I consider it reasonable for people, in a democratic fashion to decide that the government needs to provide fire protection, etc., dispose of public property, and build roads, etc. It's also reasonable for people to decide to delegate these tasks to private enterprise. Things like secretly printing money to buy mortgage-backed securities from foreign banks and secretly printing money to save motorcycle companies are so outside of what I consider the purpose of government to be that saying it's either that or hide your women is a somewhat artificial polemic on the government vs. free markets.

Lying about not printing money on national TV is a consequence of a government-like entity trying to justify its involvement in a matter where it has no natural reason to be involved.

Rocky Humbert rants:

There is nothing remotely interesting, stimulating, humorous or provocative about insulting the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

However, I remain keenly interested in hearing one's macro economic analysis of QE, and how it affects asset prices.

My thoughts about this dialogue can be found here.


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