Ben Bernanke, Keep him or Hang him?

[Excaliber]

I see a Faux poll that STRONGLY supports dump him. I suspect, like for most politicians these days, it largely anger driven. Heck given a choice is there ANYBODY in office people would say keep these days?

Weekend at Bernanke's, keep him or loose him?

[Silverback51]

Keep him.

[SP01715]

His primary responsibility is to protect the dollar, and he is failing miserably. I think interest rates should have been raised along time ago to slow the coming inflation. I don't know if anyone else would do better though.

[Excaliber]

Raise interest and risk suppressing investments. It's a tight rope...

[Ron61]

I believe that Greenspan ( not sure of name ) was one of the better people at that job before he retired. He seemed to be able to judge ahead of time what was going to happen. But no one is going to be able to know for sure what is going to happen any more. They thought that things in the housing market here were turning around and then had one of the largest foreclosure months they have had last month. Also houses being sold are down again. Lots of empty ones around here.

Ron

[SP01715]

The housing market is not turning around. Prices and inventory are still too high. The next shoe to drop is inflation. Interest rates will have to be raised to slow inflation, and that will have some negative short term effects. I have heard some experts project rates worse than the Carter years because of the amount of money that has been printed.

[Wayne Maybury]

The big problem with raising interest rates is that it will have a huge negative effect on the average American. The US economy has been built on credit spending so the average American has a large amount of debt that is being managed due to low interst rates. Increasing the interst rate will drastically reduce the amount of money that can be spent on consuming goods and services as more must be spent on the interest on loans. There will be more housing foreclosures, more unemployment, and less spending.

The US Federal Government is also deep in debt. It would cost an additional $100 billion annually to service the debt for every 1% increase in the interest rate.


Wayne

[Ron61]

Wayne,

Either way some people are going to lose on this. Don't raise the rates and let inflation take away what little buying power they have and the country loses. Raise them to keep inflation under control and not so many will be able to afford loans thus lowering the buying of big ticket items like houses and etc. This is going to be a hard and rough time to get through.

Ron

[Wayne Maybury]

Ron, they now have very little room to manoeuvre with interest rates. All of the deficit spending over the past years is coming home to roost.

Wayne

[Ron61]

Wayne,

That is true but they have to really walk a tight rope on this in a manner of speaking. Run away inflation would be as bad as the debit spending. Remember when Las Vegas changed out the slot machines to the new digital ones, they sold all of the older ones. Well now that they have about worn out the printing presses printing money, I wonder if they would sell me one.

Ron

[Excaliber]

One reason I would like to Bernanke stay is because he HAS made mistakes! But he really seem's to have learned from them. Putting a new guy in is like starting over and now is a not the time for a "newbie".

Now in some cases, it's time to let someone go. Like Greenspan, who did an admirable job for many many years. But something happened to his judgement, it came to a point when the choice was clear, he had to be let go.

[Ron61]

Ernie,

I agree with you on that. He has made some bad decisions but he seems to be learning from them and that is what counts. Not making a fool of himself and then denying it like some other of our top leaders do. And trying to control the inflation/recession by using the interest is at best a educated guess and hope that you get it correct. Right now I am for keeping him in as he has more knowledge of what is going on than any new person could.

Ron

[Wbulk]

Greenspan was largely responsible for this mess. He admitted he didn't understand the magnitude of the subprime loans after he retired, but he was directly responsible for regulation on the banks. It was all under his watch. He really believed in very few controls and he left interest rates to low to long, which fueled the whole situation. Remember the Fed is a misleading name. They are not part of the U.S. government. They are owned by a few big world banks and get to make a ton of money to print our dollars.