With apologies to Walter Winchell
Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea. Let's go to
press.
The stock market is having a tizzy again, which is halfway between a hissy
and the vapors. It can't decide whether to jump with joy or out the nearest
window . . . It compromises by doing both on alternate days. Happy days may
not be here again, but zany weeks are . . . What an initiation this has been
for the Fed's still new chairman, Ben Bernanke. It's been almost as
upsetting a welcome as the one Allan Greenspan got when he became chairman
just in time for Black Monday in October of 1987. He met the test, and
Chairman Bernanke is staying on top of this buckin' financial bronco, too.
So far.
Of course there's been criticism. And there will be more. As well as praise.
It all depends which source gets quoted in the papers . . . But after
decades in academia, where the viciousness of the politics varies in inverse
ratio to the size of the stakes, the political infighting at the Fed must
strike Professor Bernanke as tepid by comparison.
The Fed's policies won't win universal approval. No economic policy ever
does. Line up all the economists in the world and they still wouldn't reach
a conclusion . . . Some of us old fogeys think the Fed's new chairman is too
soft on inflation - much too soft - and too willing - much too willing - to
bail out the bankers and sub-prime lenders who've made loans they had no
business making. The financiers call it moral hazard . . . Keep bailing out
those lenders and driving the U.S. dollar down, and the Fed is asking for
trouble. The longer the immediate crisis is averted, the greater it'll be
when it does hit. Better a mild downturn now than a dramatic recession later
or, the worst of both worlds: stagflation. One Jimmy Carter was enough.
Some cynics are already calling the increasingly inflated version of the
dollar the bernanke, though American exporters love it. It may not be widely
noticed, but the national deficit, fiscal and trade, continues to drop. A
cheaper dollar lets American goods compete abroad. But how long before we'll
be referring to the dollar the same way we used to talk about the peso or
yen? ("The price is $98.50? How much is that in real money?") The Canadian
looney is now worth more than the U.S. dollar, for goshsakes.