Appointed by President Bush, reappointed by President Obama, and a scholar of the Great Depression, Ben Bernanke has been a blessing to the nation, and yesterday he effectively said "Enough of the Madness." The Federal Reserve took the extraordinary, unprecedented step of saying that it would maintain interest rates at "extremely low levels" through the middle of 2013.
Bernanke's interest rate announcement effectively rebukes the Tea Party and boosters of Austerity Economics. He is telling the world that Austerity Economics, as exemplified by the Debt Limit Debacle, will cause major contraction of the economy. Bernanke's action shows that he is more than talk and that he will push as hard as he can against the raging conservatives' poorly timed and designed economic policies.
Bernanke knows that this nation narrowly escaped a second Great Depression in the fall of 2008 and first half of 2009. He can be fairly criticized for not seeing the economic storm clouds gathering in 2006 and 2007, but when the storm hit in 2008, he made many more right than wrong decisions.
He knows that consumer demand has been hammered again in the last month, that a second, major economic contraction is now possible. He is doing what he can to stop it.
Who is right in the fight between Tea Party conservatives and Bernanke? The market sides with Bernanke, rallying by over 400 points, after collapsing for the last month as Austerity Economics took control of fiscal policy.
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