Truth to Power
Bill Fleckenstein, MSN's proto-Austrian, on Bernanke:
Anyone with even an ounce of common sense -- and a similar degree of familiarity with the Depression -- will quickly see that Bernanke has no comprehension of the fact that booms and busts are related. More than related. To a degree -- honest people can argue how much -- booms cause busts. They don't just precede them. Booms derange prices and therefore misdirect investment.Bernanke says that the Fed should never prick a bubble but only clean up the mess afterward. I disagree with him there, too, but this Fed doesn't just stand around watching bubbles inflate. It's inflating them, both with its monetary policy and with its tonsils. Bernanke's tenure will prove this in spades as the residue from the prior stock mania and fallout from the leveraged-housing bubble cave in on him. It's also apparent that he has no understanding of why Communism failed, or that capitalism involves creative destruction.
Comments (3)
Vince Daliessio
WOW. How long before Fleckenstein gets sent off to the Gulag?
Published: December 12, 2005 11:43 AM
Frank
The problem I have with Bernanke, as with others that pontificate from on high, is that I can't really be sure that he believes what he says. In many cases it seems that the promotion of an agenda is the actual mission.
Published: December 13, 2005 8:10 AM
Jim Bradley
I wonder if Greenspan had the amount of control the Austrian Economics "press" gave him credit for ... after all the Federal Reserve was established as a private banking system with government tax power to collateralize banking reserves. I sincerely doubt the FOMC calls the shots -- call it a "conspiracy view of history" to believe that private interests can and do co-opt government power (as if 10,000 years of recorded history doesn't already make the case...).
Published: December 13, 2005 11:24 PM