I believe that the new Fed. Reserve Chair. has ended up being

the whipping boy for Greenspan's stupid policy of cheap money or too low on interest rates. Greenspan liked any idea that would make Bush look good even if it harelipped the country.

jumped ship right before it sank. Apparently he was testifying on the Hill the other day, and nobody showed up to listen. I guess he's outlived his usefulness.

Greenspan really helped put the economy on a downward spiral, and then jumped out with his golden parachute to save his ass, just in time so that he won't take the blame when the crash comes.

Bernake is simply the inept scapegoat. He's going to continue with Greenspan's policies, even though they have long outlived their usefulness, and are in fact causing harm. When this house of economic cards comes down, Bernake will take the fall and Greenspan will forever be regarded as a god in the economic pantheon.

Greenspan made all the wrong moves every step of the way.
I can't think of one accomplishment that can be directly attributed to his actions. Not postitive accomplishments anyway.
They made him out to be a god, but he really accomplished nothing useful.
Unless of course you include monotizing our debt by printing valueless dollars to cover our evergrowing IOU'S as doing something positive.

I wonder if any of it is held in dollars?

Gotta protect that legacy, you know.

I don't think there is a hell of a lot the Fed CAN do. This economy is simply unsustainable. We're in debt to our eyeballs, both personally and as a country, wages are below subsistence, healthcare and housing are completely out of reach of a huge percentage of us, and our paychecks are being exported to China and India.

Something's got to give, and it will. It's inevitable, and there is not a damned thing the Fed can do about it.

What is needed is a complete overhaul of this economy and that requires a Congress concerned less with campaign fund raising and more concerned with the state of the country and its people. The dogmas of free trade and supply side economics need to be junked and wealth concentration has to be addressed.

If it doesn't happen, then this country is finished.

This country really is finished if people only enter politics now to make money or return favors to friends instead of serving the public good.

...as the whole concept of FOMC interest rate targeting is a titanic error and has been for decades. Greenspan will go down in history as the greatest of all the money-drug dealers, but he works withing a corrupt system that completely puts the lie to the words "free market capitalism."

When the very basis of your economic system is controlled by the modern day equivalent of the money Politburo, you are doomed to fail. The cost of money should be determined at the margin, by borrowers and lenders, and it always should be dear, at the very least 3% above the inflation rate. Since inflation runs far in excess of the published economic reports, the cost of money is now and has been essentially free. That is what led to the bubbles in the stock, bond, and real estate markets, as well as the insane levels of consumer spending and public and private debt.

We have been on money heroin. The withdrawal is not going to be pretty.

The days of wine and roses indeed...