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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Don Lloyd who wrote (52911)	3/22/1999 1:22:00 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Respond to of 132070

Don, >>All of the tools that the FED can employ generally affect all segments of the economy together, and cannot fine tune policy for one segment versus another. The only policy that would be positive would be a return to some form of the gold standard, and this is ruled out by its political impossibility. << I agree completely. There is a problem with the system itself and he is also handcuffed by politics, his limited mandate, and international conditions. However, I think there were a number of occasions during this expansion where it would have been possible to tighten credit to reign in the financial excesses without doing harm to the physical economy. (And I think he was aware of the potential excesses based on some of his comments.) Similarly, there were a number of occasions where he eased more aggressively than others might have and added fuel to a roaring fire. In fact, some would argue he started the fire in the early 90s to begin with. So I think that many of the tough decisions and difficult conditions he has had to face could be viewed as the result of prior errors in judgment on the part of the Fed. Time will tell. Wayne