I think it's time for change, but I don't get a vote.

rob dawg that is good.

The Krugman/Bernanke prior relationship makes this a non-event, I'm afraid.

Much of the economics is about understanding the opportunity cost - if you do not re-appoint Bernanke, who will you get?

Stock market is a very important driver of consumer confidence, which in turn is quite important, both economically and politically. So the stock market is important.
Another good question, though, is where the bond market will be in January.

Unfortunately, just as Greenspan was widely heralded as "The Greatest Central Banker to Ever Live" while he was in office (with the downside consequences of his actions only coming to light years after he wasn't in office -- he kept interest rates too low for too long, did not encourage regulation of the shadow banking system, and created the Greenspan put), so too is it much too easy to justify another term for Bernanke. His actions, however salving today, may have terrible consequences down the road.

In fact, the unfortunate reality is, in the last year, the Administration and the Fed's actions have been to take the easiest road possible. Massive government spending and 0% interest rates are easy to do, because they are popular and their cost is down the road. Very few actions of courage or unpopularity have been taken.

Finally, a subject that is merely political opinion, unsullied by facts and figures. It's obvious that this is what most of us want to talk about.

I am not being glib when I say that it doesn't matter which of the likely candidates for head of the Fed will be picked. All have expressed a commitment to print as much money as is necessary to reflate. All are competent enough technically, with the Fed staff, to direct the flow of printed money to the chosen reflation targets - bank loans and house prices.

Much of the economics is about understanding the opportunity cost - if you do not re-appoint Bernanke, who will you get?

Janet Yellen. Anyone else, in fact, because we shouldn't even consider rewarding Helicopter Ben with a return invite, ignoring the damage he's done trying to fix the damage he's done.

If we truly believe that there's nobody in the country that can strap this on, we're screwed anyway. I do not believe that.

cd

Bernanke is doing what he can and what he is supposed to do. It could be worse, Alan Blinder could be in the chair
,
If you had to work in the same construct, what else could you have done? I'm crazy so I would have liked to pursue the rebuild the financial sector and cut the dead one loose. Started off by seizing a bank like Citigroup, and using then their systems to provide the immediate infrastructure. Would have left investors in FNM and FRE to rot.... you don't provide net stimulus when you bailout someone's losses in an illiquid asset. Absorb all the quality people and systems from the dead banks over time. Pre-plan an IPO in 3-5 years time. Would have been cheaper, more effective
.
Yes that raises the possibility of a dollar run, but you'll be screwing up the global financial system so don't worry about that too much. What do you have to lose, a CA deficit?
,
It takes a lot of guts to keep coming up with new programs to get money out there in new ways, and avoid congress. I'm not being facetious. He has bought a lot of time at very little cost to date.

JP
Do you know what kind of administrator Bernanke was? Do you love all your work colleagues? They know each other, and I would leave it at that.

Can we not bring back Greenspan and spend the next couple years beating him like a rented mule? Where's the fairness? Where's the justice? Where's the well-deserved schadenfreude? How can we be made whole without this catharsis?

"my problem is that the depression or hyper-inflation may have only been forestalled not averted"

All that Bernanke did was delay price discovery. Either by extending and pretending and waiting for a Super V recovery to re-inflate asset prices or by moving as much of the toxic assets from the private to the public, then delever the Fed's balance sheet at whatever Pimco and others are willing to pay but causing no further harm to the banks

I say go ahead and let BomberBen stay.
Mr. Magoo got five terms...

Hard argument to beat up on...

"It takes a lot of guts to keep coming up with new programs to get money out there in new ways, and avoid congress. "

That's funny. LoL!

The easiest thing for a government official to do is increase spending, especially if it's not paid for until some undefined time in the future. Avoiding Congress made it even easier. Congress wants more money to be spent too, but doesn't want to be held accountable if it goes wrong. So facilitatiing spending (er, lending) while allowing Congress to stand back suits Congress perfectly.

HomeGnome
thanks for the b mcf vid...never seen it b4 was great iou

Why does Krugman think he has to drum up support for Ben in the press? It's not like we get a vote. It's a grace and favor appointment. Maybe he thinks there would be a chance of a great hue and cry by stakeholders, such that Obama would turn against Ben?

I also heard about Geithner for FRB, but Emanuel for Treasury?? The worst symbol of the revolving door problem

From Wiki:
After serving as an advisor to Bill Clinton, in 1998 Emanuel resigned from his position in the Clinton administration and became an investment banker at Wasserstein Perella (now Dresdner Kleinwort), where he worked until 2002. In 1999, he became a managing director at the firm’s Chicago office. Emanuel made $16.2 million in his two-and-a-half-year stint as a banker, according to Congressional disclosures. At Wasserstein Perella, he worked on eight deals, including the acquisition by Commonwealth Edison of Peco Energy and the purchase by GTCR Golder Rauner of the SecurityLink home security unit from SBC Communications.

"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

I say keep him, so that we can definitely pin the "Greater Depression" label on him.

Another hard argument to beat...

The World Needs A Breather From The US By Mike Whitney

"The $13 trillion the Fed has committed to the financial system since the beginning of the crisis –via loans and outright purchases of mortgage-backed garbage and US sovereign debt–was never authorized by Congress. In fact, the Fed stubbornly refuses to even identify which institutions got the “loans”, how much the loans were worth, what kind of collateral was accepted for the loans, or when the loans have to be repaid.

In truth, the loans are not loans at all, but gifts to the industry to keep asset prices artificially high so that the entire financial system does not come crashing down. Check this out:

“In an analysis written by economist Gary Gorton for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s 2009 Financial Markets Conference titled, “Slapped in the Face by the Invisible Hand; Banking and the Panic of 2007″, the author shows that mortgage-related securities ballooned from $492.6 billion in 1996 to $3,071.1 in 2003, while asset backed securities (ABS) jumped from $168.4 billion in 1996 to $1,253.1 in 2006. All told, more than $20 trillion in securitized debt was sold between 1997 to 2007. “

$20 trillion! How much of that feces paper–which is worth just pennies on the dollar– is sitting on the balance sheets of banks and other financial institutions just waiting to blow up as soon as the Fed asks for its money back? And the Fed will never get its money back because the prices of complex securities and derivatives will never regain their pre-crisis values. Why? Because these derivatives are linked to underlying collateral (mortgages) which have already declined 33% from their peak and are headed lower still. "

The World Needs A Breather From The US By Mike Whitney « Dandelion Salad...

~~~~

Yep ... It's all smoke and mirrors ... accounting fakery, huge unsustainable government bailouts and Fed prinitng ...

And ... the De-Levergaing hasn't even begun !

Do you know what kind of administrator Bernanke was?

??? you realize that they've known each other long before that, right?

my problem is that the depression or hyper-inflation may have only been forestalled not averted

May have been? Definitely was, and made that much more worse in doing so.

Nobody likes to hear it, but best we had a total crash so that we could rebuild the system and move forward quickly. Instead we limp along for quite a while with dead appendages slowly sucking the life from the rest of the body until the whole thing collapses.

JP
They are two people with up front biographies. This isn't a conspiracy. They are not best friends, or part of a secret conclave. They're on amiable terms personally. They know each other.

I humbly suggest that no person is so great that he can not be replaced...Come January, I say Simon Johnson or Stiglitz (not sure of the correct spelling(...

It's time to try someone else in the FED chair...

23 Trillion Dollar Trial Balloon....

---All told, more than $20 trillion in securitized debt was sold between 1997 to 2007. “

Not so far fetched now is it?

Tour Notes: Bernankepalooza 2009

I hit up my scalper for some ducats to the tour, and my man said there had been feverish demand in very small circles of folks for them, but they only cost me face value, so off I ventured into flyover to see the man perform on the staged platform in Kansas City.

"You like me, you really like me" Ben soothsaid to the fawning crowd lured in by the promise of getting out of the stifling KC heat and into an air-conditioned building...

Well, whoever we get will continue essentially the same reflation policies that Bernanke has embraced.

But, let's dream for a moment....

1. Volcker. I don't care what age he is. Credibility. He's been there before, and doesn't kow tow.
2. Others who clearly, and early, saw the bubble for what it was, and said so publicly. That rules out Yellen, Bernanke, Summers, Geithner and a host of others, with notable exceptions.

TJ and The Bear..."May have been (forestalled)? Definitely was, and made that much more worse in doing so."

hey ! theres still a one out of hundred chance....im stickin with "my have" (smile)

Where did the 28K go?

178K -75K = 103K
225K- 150K = 75K
= 28K
Or am I missing something?

Where did the 28K go?

Paying off other debts and granite counter tops. Well, not granite counter tops, but other home improvements.

"Perhaps not but he makes a nifty political tool."

He's not perfect, but I'd say he is the least manipulable of the financial insiders. Carter and Regan didn't find he bent easily to their will.

theres still a one out of hundred chance

I will not mock the optimist.

this just occurred to me.

if Obama doesn't reappoint Bernanke, he'll have to appoint a chair as well as the last vacant seat, otherwise there would be an even six seats. bernanke still has 10 more years on the FRB as a governor.

@ EHP

You'll get through it. The 70's were like that, and most people survived. At least the ones not too heavily into drugs, anyway.

"Well, yeah, of course - the private sector is shrinking its balance sheet, so the government tries to fill in the void and has to balloon its balance sheet."

~~~~

The government gave the banks 750 billlion to keep giving loans to save balance sheets ....

All the while they knew the banks would have to keep this money and get more by selling crap

to the Fed and an alphabet soup of government programs that will end up costing the tax payer ...

What happened to Glass Steagall .... making the tax payer risk smaller ?

These banks needed to be put into receivership ... and even after trillions of tax payer largesse may still go belly up ...

All to save share and bond holders ... at tax payer expense ...

Basel Too,
Obama was set to have like 3 or 4 appointments to the FRB. There are 2 vacant seats right now, Bernanke is up in 2010, and probably one other in the next 3 years will expire

"What happened to Glass Steagall "?

Why is Glass-Steagall such a hot political potato? Wouldn't mortgage-backed securities backed by payments from penniless borrowers have been shoveled out the door just as fast in 2004-now with Glass-Steagall?

You'll get through it. The 70's were like that, and most people survived. At least the ones not too heavily into drugs, anyway.

Define 'too heavily'...

I think you might have mistaken me, EHP
Sampling some of BC's finest?

Does Bernanke have credibility as a fighter of inflation or bubbles?

Does anyone have anything to help on this?

And we all know that inflation is the great political temptation for the future

"You hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability."

MrM,

+1. Excellent.

Define 'too heavily'... - dryfly

It's kind of circular-- if you die of it, that was a bit too much, by definition...

If anyone starts talking religion or politics; I'll bounce you outta here so fast your head will pass your ass.

It's kind of circular-- if you die of it, that was a bit too much, by definition...

Good. Then I can truthfully say I wasn't into drugs too heavily, right?

patientrenter (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Sun, 8/9/2009 - 3:42 pm
reply ignore user
"If you want to lash out at people, to apply responsibility for the crisis, well look at the ones that profited from it. "
Homeowners who sold at the peak in the most bubbly areas?

We sold in 2004 in the Bay Area when fundamentals made no sense anymore. Will buy again when fundamentals make some sense again.

"Glass-Steagall as the shorthand..."

I see. Thanks.

Not that it's all that important, then, but do you happen to know if the weakening of home lending standards 2004-now was enabled by the glba and other regulatory changes? I am trying to figure out if the failure to underwrite then was caused by huge demand for mortgage bonds, together with bipartisan political support for more money for housing, or was it enabled more by changes in regulation. If Citibank couldnt engage in MBS securitization back in 2007, wouldn't Lehman just have done more? Or am I missing something?

I don't even want to think about it.

Heck, appoint CR.

Would he take it if offered?

Continuing our series "Your Tax Dollars At Work"

Banks make $38bn from overdraft fees

US banks stand to collect a record $38.5bn in fees for customer overdrafts this year, with the bulk of the revenue coming from the most financially stretched consumers amid the deepest recession since the 1930s, according to research. The fees are nearly double those reported in 2000.
...
The most cash-strapped customers are the hardest hit by such fees, with 90 per cent of overdraft revenues coming from 10 per cent of the 130m checking accounts in the US. Regular use of overdrafts is most common among consumers with low credit scores, Moebs discovered.
Banks say that the fees compensate for the risk they incur when they pay on behalf of customers who do not have enough money in their accounts. “Overdraft fees are there for a reason, we take on a lot of risk,” a senior banker said. “It’s a service to our customers, they want us to pay their overdrafts.”
The highest overdraft fees were charged by the largest banks, said Mr Moebs. At banks with assets greater than $50bn – a group including Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo – the median overdraft fee is set at $33.
At BofA, a customer overdrawn by as little as $6 could trigger a $35 penalty. If the customer does not realise they have a negative balance and continue spending, they could incur that fee as many as 10 times in a single day, for a total of $350. Failing to repay the overdraft within a few days results in an additional $35 penalty.
BofA said that the bank was “committed to ensuring that our fees are transparent and predictable. We have a range of tools and services to give customers more control over their accounts and to prevent these fees”.

Volcker allowed himself to be used as a political pawn by Obama.

He's either unable to grasp the politics today or his ego is in charge.

Or, he was misled.

If the only options are Summers, Geithner or Yellen, then certainly Helicopter Ben should be reappointed.

And beating a reappointed Greenspan like a mule shouldn't be ruled out.

patientrenter: if i had to narrow it down, i would say that the credit (not just housing) bubble was a factor of the savings glut (both domestic and global-- trade deficit, pensions, 401ks, etc), GLBA, and Basel II, with the latter two providing the mechanism for churning savings into debt.

Movie time - later all!

patient renter you asked
Not that it's all that important, then, but do you happen to know if the weakening of home lending standards 2004-now was enabled by the glba and other regulatory changes? I am trying to figure out if the failure to underwrite then was caused by huge demand for mortgage bonds,"

the huge US imbalance of trade sent voluminous amounts of money circulating around the globe looking for a place to land

and the bankstas had just the plan, yeah securitzation of mortgages, ...yeah thats the ticket

and of course student loans and credit cards and yeah... everything!

and with leverage and fees wow just think of the bonuses

but hey what to do

gotta get those pesky americans to borrow more

fortunately with a little nudge from the madison avenue world of stuff-your-face-consumerism

no problem

The discussion about replacing the Fed chair is a waste of time.

We need to replace the money (currency)-printing system.

Well said, Mock.

Somebody asked a while back why anyone would continue to live in California.

Two weekends ago I biked from my house out to the Don Edwards nature preserve.  It was only about half an hour by bike.  I passed pelicans and geese along the way.

Biking up to a vantage point I passed 3 hawks searching for food two of them at most 20 feet from me. I've also seen foxes and deers along this same route.

At the top of the vantage point I had an unobstructed view all the way from the Santa Cruz Mountains up to San Francisco and Oakland including 3 of the 4 bridges.  It was absolutely quiet with no one else around.

Another 15 minute bike ride put me right back into humanity where I have my choice of 2 good sushi restaurants,  hong style, mandarin style and taiwanese style restaurants plus plenty of other good hole in the wall places.

My other favorite route takes 45 minutes the other way and ends with a 2000 foot climb that gives me a 360 degree view of the area and again nobody else around.

Times like these make me extremely grateful for all that I have around where I live.

How about food?

The egg-challah-raisin bread rose beautifully and half a loaf has
been consumed. That one was braided. I have a loaf that is
swirled with cinnamon sugar and raisins.

My mother visited "old people" in nursing homes, or AlFs in Balto
with her church lady friends.

I think being just with one's own age group would be hell. She apparently
agrees. I can be a PIA but the nursing home thing is simply awful.

I've been appointed ad litem quite a few times for old people
who need guardians. If they know their own names they are
well off. The places are usually quite clean and deeply depressing.

When I'm functionally dead, I want to be buried

When I'm functionally dead, I want to be Soylent Green (with the movie first, of course).

reply to patient renter just above
yes and no

before gramm leach bliley act deregulated the huge swath of casino banking

the bankstas were already doing much, but not all, of what the new law legalized

plus there had been decisions and rulings from different executive branch reg agencies that weakened glass-steagal long before it was made official and complete, by GLBA

May I ask what exactly has Bernanke saved aside from the banksters and their ilk? I mean, we're probably looking at 8 million unemployed, with little or no prospect of getting a job in the new economy that Bernanke has saved and recreated. WTF is that to be happy about?

The system was corrupt and horrid before, now it comes out much worse, but with the entrenched interests more powerful, and the inequality they spawned before just that much worse and structural imbalances probably even worse. And all the pieces are in place for another catastrophe ahead where 10 million lose their jobs in the next hoocoodanode fiasco. These people should be bee-ach slapped and I can bet you your arse they'll be on TIme Mags cover soon as heroes. It's frickin disgusting.

For Dryfly
May you forever relapse...
YouTube - Bootsy Collins - Stretchin'Out

Sure is disgusting, GDD9000.
The trick is to not let it upset you.
In other words, let the emotions pass through...

HG- I am tryin, but it is really not easy lately. I think I need to go take a walk or something. (again) The first one didnt quite help.

Goldman Sachs' preferred dividends to Warren Buffett were saved. They are even paid at a higher rate than the US gets (even though we guarantee GS).

here's the thing - once we turn Bernanke and co into heroes over the next few months, that will also help the little stinky turtle greenspan to slither out from the slime he inhabits, boasting about how great he was, is and will be. You see, we never even got the point where the turtle was officially disgraced. Yes, many of us here know it, but he is still on TV, still lecturing, still op-eding in the journal, and doofuses like certain family members of mine still dont get that there is anything wrong with the WSJ or that the turtle should have been left on its shell, turned over to bake in the sun, then stomped on and blow away into dust. Now we'll have to tolerate a decade of the bearded one, and all the annoying-ness that goes with hero-worship for him.

As we went from 2004 to 2005, to 2006, and to 2007, I was astonished at how low risk spreads on corporate bonds were going, and how weak the lender protections in private equity deals were becoming. And I could see first hand that home loan standards had become non-existent.

But what I can't put my finger on is how regulatory changes enabled this. More precisely, are there any specific changes in regulations without which none of this would have happened? Were the changes more incidental or contributory than causative?

Of course, if the Chairman of the Federal Reserve had got up in 2004 and said that lending was getting out of hand, and he was going to do whatever ti took to crack down on lending that merely drove asset price speculation, and followed up at all costs, that could have made a difference. But that would not have been a change in the law, it would have been a statement of a change in policy.

To boil it down, were the changes in regulations really what caused the bad lending, or were they merely a sign of the political support for loose lending, and a little extra grease on already slippery skids?

"You're basically asking whether something would have burned had there not been an accelerant."

Precisely. Any ideas, anyone?

aig at it again
AIG Sets Aside $249 Million for Retention Bonus Costs (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

A photo for you gabyjan

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3315/3447141139_b3c9c011ec_b.jpg

More precisely, are there any specific changes in regulations without which none of this would have happened?

since you're looking for absolutes: 100% capital gains tax.

tell me you dont see the greenspan resemblance to gollum

http://fusedfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/gollum.jpg

not a red herring

a life preserver for the 25% unemployeed

must go outside... bye

"since you're looking for absolutes: 100% capital gains tax."

Touche.

I operate in an environment with lots of complicated rules, and yet I know I can get around a lot of those rules if I really want to (and I have the support of my bosses and colleagues). Some of the rules are more effective than others. But what really counts is the intent and will of the people involved. If my organization commits to complying with the intent of some rules, we do. If our regulators were to make clear that there were drastic consequences for skirting the intent of certain rules, we would not go around them.

My experience leads me to be skeptical that regulations and laws alone are capable of resisting powerful economic forces. Strong individuals in positions of power can achieve some results. In the world of lending regulations, I tend to believe that a clear-minded, very powerful (e.g. Treasury Secretary or Fed head) and committed person or persons could have made a dent, but a law saying that MBSs could only be packaged by Lehman, not BoA? That would have had little or no impact. A law that required down payments of 20% or more in home lending, with regulations and enforcement to catch the cheats? That would have been effective, but I don't know the laws well enough to know if there were provisions as powerful as this in place under Glass-Steagall.

What we need to set things in their proper order is a Bootzilla!
YouTube - Bootsy's Rubber Band (Bootzilla - 1978)

If Ben goes than the secret coup d'etat by GS will be one step closer to sucess. They know what is come for us, shambling quietly, invisible, and deadly. They plan on achieving their goal of owning our minds by subetly embedding messages for us in the DVD's sent to us by Netflix. ITS ALL A PLAN!

nova
please tell me that it isnt "3rd rock from the sun"that is what ive been getting.

Yabba Dabba Dooba, Baby!

Funk me up!

Saw a story on this device today, let's hope the future is kind...we talk 1984 alot, but Brazil is right up there too, and I can't get that catchy tune out of my head these days.
Smat 'through-wall' Radar Sensing Device

scone,
Went out for a run, here is my belated reply.
I want to first make it clear that I don't have a problem with you or any other poster here unless I've already said as much. I do value the experience of older people, I collect a lot of good ideas from them. I understand what you mean to say, that all things come to an end, even the bad and scary ones. That no matter what the next 2 years bring, the next twenty will be better.
I was venting about something else. People who dismiss the measured economic reality with all the intellectual might of a Ben Stein. They don't say "I've been through worse" to be kind. They say it out of anger, and near as I can tell it's because they want someone to blame for the economy not supporting their house prices. Meanwhile these young kids early into their careers have to politely correct them that, "Sorry, but the economy doesn't and didn't support those house prices"
The whole matter is made worse because of a generational divide. From the perspective of the younger crowd, there is a sense of generational betrayal. I don't buy into the blame the boomers argument, but I do sympathize. The complaints are about the accumulated public debt, cost of education, cost of housing, and outsourcing. The complaints are legitimate but the blame is not, they probably all revolve around the decline of real disposable incomes. For starters, can I get a show of hand from boomers who know what pension looting is? Second of all, who was it that had the power and who had the foresight about these decisions to be condemned as guilty. Our society doesn't exactly have methods to allow for pro-active accountability. Furthermore, what would have been the alternative set of decisions. You can only rebuild once after war, only boost profits once by improving efficiency or increasing leverage, etc. Our bittersweet destiny is that things cannot simply stay the same. Finally, there are guilty hands older and younger than boomers and there are boomers that did stand up to no avail.
It all gets under my skin more than it should, not because of any personal concern, but because what I interpret the economic data to say where we're going. It is already worse than modern recorded experiences on many levels. To use the XX's recession was worse than the one today as a lead off point is a very dull argument, and who's to say the worst is over. True, we've seen a temporal peak in unemployment, and there are a lot of forecasts predicting stunning GDP growth. But there is a lot more going on. I believe in a new normal coming to be, not necessarily worse; I'm not a sadist that believes those who lived above their mean must be punished to compensate.
It all comes back to credit for me. The government plan is hoping to allow insolvencies to be cured given enough time, just like the 80s and the Latin American debt. That misses the bigger issue. The economy has grown dependent on a growing debt:gdp. I don't see much room to continue doing so, and without that there are huge deleveraging problems. There is the hit from plateauing the debt:gdp. Then there is the hit from saving to restore balance sheet health. The government can try to take over private or corporate debt, but that's not enough. I question how much of this debt the US govt can take on while: net SS payouts coming earlier than 2017, no where to run CA surpluses with, and maintaining a structurally high deficit. It's a $50tn pie. I'm not predicting things that have been sustained for decades will change. They already have. Credit is declining.
That's not a feature of past recessions on record. It will not be different this time, it already is different

Bernanke is an academic. He may have been the most academic Fed chairman of all time.

As an academic, he's true to his theories and beliefs, including the most harebrained.

What he never planned for in his academic theories was the amount of corporate and financial system pilfering that would take place once the Fed really turned on the stimulus taps.

And how fast the public, Joe Public taxpayer, would backlash against a Fed that puts taxpayers of the future (all ages, all generations) so in hock, to pay off pilfering in the present.

Bernanke can't undo this mistake. But Obama can undo Bernanke.

HomeGnome,
I thought you had been talking about unemployment for some reason

nova, I think about that all the time...I keep referring to colony collapse disorder...not just for bees, but everything...something is going on on a collective subconscious level, but who knows what is coming. Just feel mostly uncomfortable these days, and can't put my finger on why. But it is probably just paranoid me.

We older people value your younger body.

Drop roast beef from helicopters.

Human beings have intuition. We know more than we know if you know what I mean.

Past performance is for losers.

"Goldman Sachs' preferred dividends to Warren Buffett were saved. They are even paid at a higher rate than the US gets (even though we guarantee GS). "

I thought someone said tax payers were going to get the best deal (better than Buffett). Oh sorry, that was said before the elections.

I understand what you mean to say, that all things come to an end, even the bad and scary ones. EHP

Actually, what I meant to say was that you, in particular, will do fine. You're a bright young man with excellent prospects, and when you get some job and life experience out of the academic world, you'll be very hard to beat.

But I don't buy the idea that this particular recession is somehow so new, so different, so unprecedented, that it's impossible to "get through" and/or so different from the past that it can't be understood via the "lessons of history" such as they are. It must be said, as well, that nothing happening today scares me as much as some of the stuff from the Cold War. When it gets worse than the Bay of Pigs, for instance, then it's very bad indeed. So far, that hasn't happened.

Let's bring back Julia Child to stick a skewer up Ben's ass on national tv, then place him back in the Fed chair that's been wired, turn the current on, and see if he'll grunt, groan, and say momma. Let broward have his wish feast, then fly the leftovers to moon and let him play among the stars. YouTube - frank sinatra - fly me to the moon

One of Bernanke's main goals has been to prevent deflation at almost all costs. And not withstanding Japan, which has been dealing with deflation for some time, Bernanke took the lead in slashing interest rates to near zero levels, ahead of the ECB and other foreign central banks.

But last week Trichet made some hawkish comments on not continuing with further stimulus, which could have big implications for global currency markets. It will be interesting to see if and/or when Bernanke follows suit.

If this does occur, it looks to have further implications for the dollar, as well as the gold price, as described here: Gold price weakens on hawkish interest rate