Stop A.G.?
Robert Loest says it can't be done ipsmillennium.com :
"Something needs to be said about the inflation numbers we are seeing. I've been saying for years that there isn't any inflation, and I've been right. Nevertheless, this time there really is some inflation. It's only a blip, and it probably won't last more than several months, but for the first time in a decade, it's real inflation, vs. a simple supply/demand imbalance in goods and services.
Know why? The Federal Reserve caused it, that's why. Recall what happened in the Fall of 1998, when the failure of Long Term Capital Management, and the bonehead Nobel Laureate economists there who viewed the economy as a machine instead of an intelligent system, convinced the Fed that they should flood the economy with money to bail out the fools and their private bankers. I can hardly feel sorry for anyone foolish enough to give an economist money to manage, but it hurt a lot of innocent folks as well. The bailout probably wasn't necessary, and shouldn't have been done in any case. It violated the principle of moral hazard, which is when you bail someone out every time they do stupid, risky things, they don't have any incentive to do smart things. All that extra money from the financial system went into pushing up stock prices. The government short-circuited the messages sent by the free market system that serve to discipline participants so they don't take the kinds of idiotic, extreme risks that LTCM did.
In 1999, Greenspan again decided to flood the economy with money. This time his excuse is that he somehow got convinced that Y2K would end civilization if he didn't. For the first time since the late 1970s and early 1980s, the government pumped so much excess money into the economy so fast that it created a supply/demand imbalance in the money supply. Since money is our medium of exchange, this is translated directly into inflation.
Fed-created inflation.
This wasn't lending created by the private sector for productive capacity expansion, home loans, new employees, R&D, productive efficiency gains and all the other things that private, non-financial borrowing is for. It was lending by financial institutions for pure gambles, and it caused the huge, 4-month spike in stock prices that began in October last year, and peaked on March 10, 2000. It sucked a lot of folks into the stock market, then spit them out.
The halfwits at the Federal Reserve are so ignorant, they caused the very thing they claim to be fighting. Now, of course, they are raising interest rates and sopping up all that excess liquidity in a heroic attempt to fight off the evil inflation monster. And driving stock prices down into the bargain. They have scared people half to death, dramatically increased the volatility and risk in the stock market, and caused inflation and an asset price bubble that lost a lot of money for folks, at least temporarily. Greenspan has been dead wrong on his predictions for inflation, economic growth rates, and unemployment rates every single quarter for more years than I can remember.
And he still has his job. For bureaucrats, there are no personal consequences, no matter how badly they screw up."
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But why worry? A.G. can't force the economy, long-term, to bend to his napoleonic whims. All the little guy really wants is to be on TV. Notice how his head swells when he's in the spotlight. Give him his own show and a catchy little phrase a la, "Survey Says!" or "Final Answer?!" and he'll be one happy little camper.
Let's just make sure he has to relinquish his current job first, else his catch phrase might become, "Up a Point!".
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