Sorry for the delay. The weekends are tough for me, especially this time of year, to find time to sit in front of the computer. I have now put my thoughts together and hopefully this will be coherent.
My bitch with Bernanke and the Federal Reserve is their complete failure in sending alarms sooner that things were not going well. In March 2007 Dr. Bernanke told a Congressional hearing that the US economy would experince "moderate growth". Going back in time, Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve now admits "he had also been wrong in rejecting fears that the five-year housing boom was turning into an unsustainable speculative bubble that could harm the economy when it burst. Greenspan maintained during that period that home prices were unlikely to post a significant decline nationally because housing was a local market."
Less than two years later "on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, the astonished leadership of the U.S. Congress was told in a private session by the chairman of the Federal Reserve that the American economy was in grave danger of a complete meltdown within a matter of days. "There was literally a pause in that room where the oxygen left," says Senator Christopher Dodd." Frontline did a story on this that is a must see.
This makes Bernanke either incompetent or a liar. Why wait until the meltdown was a matter of days away? And now Bernanke tells us the recession is over. What is interesting about this speech is his description of panic and confidence. We can't trust these guys. How are we supposed to have confidence? We are being told not to trust our own eyes. With the continuing failure of banks (see previous post) to the continued job losses.
Choose to listen to Bernanke at your own peril.
blog comments powered by Disqus