Archive for the ‘Central Bank’ tag
Prior knowledge is not a requirement
How can one reconcile this statement:
“We need a president who can restore our confidence,” she said. “We need a president who is ready on Day 1 to be commander in chief of our economy.”
with this:
When asked why she’d appoint Alan Greenspan to a working group of financial leaders to design a response to the housing crisis, Clinton told the Philadelphia Daily News:
"Not only that, but the Fed didn’t act while he was there. But he has a calming influence still to this day on Wall Street — don’t ask me why because I never understand what he’s saying – but nevertheless people respond to that Delphic oracle approach. I think it would be wise to include him. And recently he’s come out and vert smartly so [sic] that we have to deal with housing and maybe we need to have some kind of buyout mechanism for mortgages. So he’s moved on his understanding and depth of the problem — but you know you could pick three others.
I guess that commanding the economy has nothing to do with actually understanding the monetary policies the central bank implements…. 
As a side note, and it isn’t only semantic - someone should explain the entire cadre of candidates that the President is not the commander in chief of the economy, nor the commander in chief of the country. The President is mere commander in chief of the Army, which is a lot of responsibility by itself. The country, its citizens and the economy have no commanders.
Gloomy morning
The markets meltdown is very scary, and walking down wall-street today I didn’t see many happy faces. As the situation worsen we are going to hear more and more suggestions for central government actions, bailouts and other measures that will lead to further decline. As people get more desperate, and by god I can’t stop worry, and the natural tendency of election season populism - we will have to hear about the “Market Failure”.
But what we experiencing now isn’t a market failure, not at all. In fact Free Market advocates were warning us long time ago about the dangerous and the dire consequences of our inflationary policies. It was easier to dismiss such warnings and their bearer, the cost of that mistake is much more than a penny.