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Strategies & Market Trends : The coming US dollar crisis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ggersh who wrote (25281)	12/7/2009 1:46:39 PM
From: Real Man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71463

Sorry for screaming, just cut and paste -g- reuters.com Bernanke testimony at Senate confirmation hearing BERNANKE, AFTER BEING ASKED IF MORTGAGE RATES WILL RISE A COUPLE OF HUNDRED BASIS POINTS WHEN THE MBS PURCHASE PROGRAM ENDS: "We have said that the current program is going to come to an end at the end of the first quarter. It is a monetary policy decision and the committee will have to see how the economy is evolving and whether or not we need to do more. The several hundred basis points... there is a lot of uncertainty about exactly what the impact will be .. and I think that is very much at the high end of what estimates are." "In order to try to mitigate the effects we have been tapering it off very slowly and so far we have not seen much effect but we'll see how that evolves and the committee is prepared to respond if necessary." ............................... SENATOR DODD, BERNANKE EXCHANGE ON AIG COUNTERPARTIES: SENATOR DODD: The fact that we allowed 100 cents on the dollar to go to the counterparties with little or no negotiation, I've raised the issue with others before, I don't understand that at all and most Americans don't. That was billions of dollars, one company alone was $12.5 billion. It is hard to accept the notion we couldn't negotiate with the counterparties at that time. BERNANKE: We had no leverage. If we didn't pay off they would have said "you're bankrupt".. DODD: We wrote a check for $180 billion to AIG, if we hadn't done that they would have been in trouble. BERNANKE: To AIG, but not... DODD: The counterparties would have been in trouble too. BERNANKE: That's all true, but most of the firms were foreign, we had no authority or leverage over them. DODD: But you're the chairman of the Federal Reserve, you've got powers. BERNANKE: I don't abuse my supervisory power DODD: Apparently not, in that case.