Wednesday
Nov102010
BUSTED: Congressman Asks "Chairman Bernanke, Do We Have A Plan To Deal With The Deficit?" (WATCH)
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Editor's note: Flashback clip from earlier this Summer...
Video: Helicopter Ben before Congress -- June 9, 2010
Bernanke:
- "Again, I'm reiterating this point -- but I think it's very important - we need a fiscal exit strategy. The Federal Reserve has a strategy for exiting from our monetary policy. The United States government and fiscal authorities have to have a strategy for exiting from your fiscal policy.
Djou:
- "And right now, do you see any fiscal exit strategy right now from the United States Congress?"
Bernanke:
- "...Right now, um, there is not anything on the table at this point."
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Nov 10, 2010 at 11:56 AM
Reader Comments (11)
http://act.bravenewfilms.org/go/173?akid=1152.29662.w4MtFe&t=5
No better links than me
and cowards remove it?lol
What Agenda DB has?Lol
0001000 00010101000 101010001000 0101010101010 0101010101010 010101010101 001101111111100101010 0101010101010101 010101 010101010 1010101010010101010101 0101 10101 0101010101001010 10101010?
you need soul searching therapy.
USA republic is busted
How to Fund Wars?
How to Bail Out States?
How to keep Banks solvent/
How to afford Health Care?
How to fund unemployment?
How to Fund unfunded Pension liabilities?
How to fund Medicare?
What Jobs?
Industrial Demand Stagnation...
Working class has nothing to contribute to new taxes?
I love reading the words of someone who is angrier than me. Kunstler has worked himself into an anti-Obama and anti-Wall Street frenzy. He comes at it from a completely different angle, but his conclusions match John Hussman’s and John Mauldin’s. The entire world financial picture being presented to the non-thinking masses is a hologram. It doesn’t exist. The banks are insolvent. The government is insolvent. We are playing pretend games. The few are enriched, while the majority are screwed. You Southern readers will be happy to see his usual NASCAR shot.
http://theburningplatform.com/blog/2010/06/28/the-audacity-of-cluel...
Texas Manufacturing Activity Weakens
Texas factory activity declined slightly in June, according to business executives responding to the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey. The production index, a key indicator of state manufacturing conditions, fell from 21 in May to –2 in June, abruptly ending a seven-month streak of positive readings.
All remaining indexes for factory activity also fell in June, and many turned negative. The new orders index fell from 16 to –8 as 78 percent of respondents reported that their June orders were either flat or down from May. The shipments index fell from 15 to –9, suggesting shipments contracted in June after three consecutive months of growth.
The general business activity index turned negative also, with 82 percent of respondents noting that June activity worsened or was unchanged from the prior month. The company outlook index fell from 20 to –3, as only 18 percent of manufacturers said their outlook had improved over the previous month, compared with nearly a third in May. "
But seriously, Krugman, as you know, has "thrown in the towel" because he thinks the governments of the world have decided to tightened their belts, taking the lead from Germany and the rest of Europe. (Bring their deficits down and put their financial houses in order)
I'm not saying I agree with Krugman's economics, but he thinks the United States government and European governments should tax and spend right now and forget the budget deficit for awhile just to keep the economy from heading back down into a double dip Recession with a big "R" or small "d" And he is telling us that the governments of the world are NOT going to do this.
Here is the Krugman article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html?th&emc=th
Bernanke is more of a Milton Friedman monetarist who believes it was a contraction of the money supply (raising interest rates) that caused the G.D. That's why he's keeping interest rates at near zero (most economists tell us it is impossible, in the long run and even medium run, to keep interest rates low because market forces will set interest rates automatically) so that the money supply wont contract.
From Wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernanke
"Bernanke is particularly interested in the economic and political causes of the Great Depression, on which he has written extensively. Before Bernanke's work, the dominant monetarist theory of the Great Depression was Milton Friedman's view that it had been largely caused by the Federal Reserve's having reduced the money supply. In a speech on Milton Friedman's ninetieth birthday (November 8, 2002), Bernanke said, "Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna [Schwartz, Friedman's coauthor]: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."[47] Bernanke has cited Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in his decision to lower interest rates to zero.[48] Anna Schwartz however is highly critical of Bernanke and wrote an opinion piece on New York Times to advise President Obama against his reappointment to Chair of Federal Reserve. Bernanke focused less on the role of the Federal Reserve, and more on the role of private banks and financial institutions."
So it looks as if the world is headed for fiscal "responsibility" (yeah, sure) where prices will contract, the poor will suffer. (my opinion, of course)
Bernanke doesn't want this any more than Krugman does. But they follow different approaches and theories.
My opinion is that economies are too complicated for economists to predict or manage. It's like saying you have a basketball game under control because your team is playing zone defense or man-on-man. It's still a basketball game and the players win or lose for causes that are beyond even the coach's capacity to analyze.
Hope this economy doesn't end up as the Celts ended up.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/10/18/deflation-ben-bernanke-and-the-famous-helicopter/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327814/Mid-term-Elections-2010-Politicians-spent-4-2bn-adverts.html#ixzz14tcXtpac
Very good story...