Fed's Hoenig: Keeping Rates Too Low 'Dangerous Gamble'

CNBC ^ | Friday August 13 2010

[Bigtigermike]

The Federal Reserve is undertaking a "dangerous gamble" by keeping rates at near zero for so long, and must start raising rates or risk damaging the nascent U.S. recovery, a top Federal Reserve official said on Friday.

"To be clear, I am not advocating a tight monetary policy," Kansas City Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig said in the text of a speech to the Lincoln, Nebraska, Chamber of Commerce. "I am advocating a policy that remains accommodative but slowly firms as the economy itself expands and moves toward more balance."

Hoenig has been the lone dissenter on the Fed's policy-setting panel, which on Tuesday repeated the U.S. central bank's pledge to keep interest rates extraordinarily low for an "extended period."

The Fed took the further step of saying it would begin reinvesting cash from maturing mortgage bonds to buy more government debt. The decision reflected the Fed's concern over the slowdown in the economic recovery it helped bring about by cutting rates to near zero in December 2008 and buying nearly $1.3 trillion in mortgage-linked debt to shore up the housing market.

However, Hoenig said Friday he believes the economy "barring specific shocks and bad policy ...should continue to grow over the next several quarters."

[Bigtigermike]

Hoenig said Friday he believes the economy "barring specific shocks and bad policy ...should continue to grow over the next several quarters."

Well Mr.Hoenig....bad policy is here right in front of you!

[alecqss]

Assuming that destruction is the real goal, it’s a safe gamble...

[muawiyah]

At this time he's probably the last Fed who won't admit the world took a massive DEFLATIONARY HIT in 2008 when housing prices in the developed world crashed.

Those prices are still crashing in many places.

At the same time robotics and computer driven systems continue to knock the bottom out of the cost of manufacturing.

It's not somebody exporting your job overseas that's the problem ~ rather, it's the dude installing the robot to replace your entire factory!

That's only going to get worse.

[TopQuark]

Mr. Hoenig cares only about himself. One can debate the validity of his approach (to most people, myself included, raising interest rates to fight deflation is ridiculous prima facie), but it was highly irresponsible for him to say what he did today, in the format he did. It's about personal aggrandizement, and the country be damned.

[unspun]

News, yes, but we know this is not about interest rates.

It is about the destruction of America, by global Marxofascist revolutionaries.

Understand America's Problems, But You Want The Solution?.

[griswold3]

THERE WILL BE LITTLE OR NO INFLATION
IN THOSE THINGS THAT PEOPLE DO NOT NEED.

The corollary to that (and this goes back to my forecast) is this...

THERE WILL BE SEVERE INFLATION (EVEN HYPERINFLATION)
IN THOSE THINGS THAT PEOPLE DO NEED.

SafeHaven.com

[cranked]

Ben apparently plays a role in the AnnointedIdiot’s cloward and piven strategy ...