Category: Fed

The Fed chairman, Ben “Helicopter” Bernanke, is in the hot seat now. The markets are once again focusing on the next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) set for Tuesday and Wednesday of this coming week. The Fed is expected to hold interest rates unchanged at this meeting but is clearly in an uncomfortable position.

Inflation is roaring ahead at serious rates of increase and the Dollar is in danger of a collapse on forex markets, which would seem to indicate a need for the Fed to start increasing interest rates. However, increasing interest rates with a soft economy underway, a badly deteriorating housing market, and businesses starting to lay off workers at higher rates would probably throw the economy into a deep recession that the Fed has been fighting hard to avoid. After all, this is an election year.

Ben Bernanke is an avowed advocate of a more transparent Federal Reserve and reactionary, anxious markets are the byproduct. Without the mysterious Alan Greenspan at the helm, the curtain has been pulled back on the Fed to reveal Bernanke as a clear, direct economist who admits he has no crystal ball. Ben Bernanke is a super active nanny and he is already supporting the elite financial interests that have created this speculative bubble in the first place.

Over one trillion Dollars have already been made available to the banks and the brokerages to protect them from their own excesses and to attempt to forestall a deflationary rigor mortis. If these bail out operations had not been taken, if the financial system itself were transparent, the house of cards would surely collapse on us all and the people would lynch Bernanke and any other rich jerk on Wall Street and in Washington that they could get their hands on. Bernanke must not rest well at night knowing just how fragile the financial system still is.