Posted on 02/23/2009 8:00:44 PM PST by Hillary's Folly
This prescience article has never been more relevant than today. I urge to read it all.
TIME TO BRING PAUL VOLCKER OUT OF RETIREMENT
John Crudele
May 4, 2008
SAVE the dollar! Fire Ber nanke!
There have been a lot of folks attacking Ben Bernanke lately.
Most are steamed that the chairman of the Federal Reserve isn't cutting interest rates fast enough to help the economy, even though he's been slashing borrowing costs since last summer.
Oh, those misguided souls!
Bernanke's problem is just the opposite - he's proving to be so easily manipulated by Wall Street and anxious politicians that investors both here and abroad are becoming afraid to entrust their assets to the US securities markets and the dollar.
Inflation is roaring and the chairman is dutifully paying lip service to the problem.
But investors doubt that Bernanke will ever be the true inflation fighter and currency protector that his job requires. Let's start at the beginning, because Bernanke only deserves a smidgen of the blame.
The Fed chief is simply the wrong man in the wrong job in a frighteningly bad time.
Alan Greenspan is the true devil of this story.
All the while Greenspan was pulling a charade on Congress.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Paul Volker is already President Obama’s top economic
advisor.
He recently made a statement to the effect that
the U.S. economy may be deteriorating even faster and more
broadly around the globe than it did during the Great Depression.
Ah...just now saw the date on your post. :-)
Sure wish he would get interest rates back to 18%!!
Interest rates were 12 to 13% when Volker took over the Fed, They rose to 20 during his tenure, which was started under the end days of Carter’s Malaise administration. When he left the Fed, after being reappointed by Reagan, rates were 7.5%.
In the process of raising rates during the early 80’s inflation went from 13% to 3% in less than 2 years, helping the recovery that soon followed.
Are we better off or nearer to recovery now with interest rates at zero than we were then with them at 21%?
Yes I know, but where is he? That’s the point. he get’s drug out for the ocassional presser yet Geitner is the one sent to build confidence or show competency?
No but we are going to have to go into a deep depression before any recovery, it’s years away.
I fear you are right, and let us nut forget who led us here. I don’t see how we can blame Democrats for acting like Democrats. There is a reason they are in office across the board, and there is a reason they can make this crap they’re pushing palatable to many. It is because the people I’ve voted for for 30 years were malfeasant
...speaking at Columbia University, writing a report for the Group of 30, and the like.
“Volcker, chairman of Obama’s economic recovery board, said: ‘I don’t remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world,’ he said.”
Also at Columbia University (Friday), George Soros said (excerpts)
“We witnessed the collapse of the financial system. It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom...The crisis is actually more severe than the Great Depression...It’s like watching the demise of the Soviet Union,...”
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