Get While the Gettin' is Good

The understatement of the day comes from Fed chairman Ben Bernanke who essentially says: I'm Dispensable.

“I don’t think that I’m the only person in the world who can manage the exit,” Bernanke said when asked at a news conference in Washington if he’s discussed his plans with President Barack Obama.

What Bernanke said is best translated as "I'll get while the gettin' is good. Besides, I really don't have an exit plan in the first place, nor does anyone else."

• What better time to leave when the world has forgotten about your ignorance in blowing the biggest housing and debt bubble the world has ever seen? 
• What better time to leave than when equity and bond prices are back in enormous bubbles?  
• What better time to dump what comes next on Janet Yellen (the obvious next dove Fed chairperson appointee)?

Bernanke's big hope is that he can keep this house of cards from collapsing until January when his term expires, and Yellen takes over.

He claims he is tired and wants out of the public life. He ought to be tired after sponsoring the world's biggest housing bubble then bailing out every "too big to fail bank" in the wake.

For that, he gets the praise of Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo- Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, who says "His knowledge and experience is too valuable to let him go."

What a joke.

Hans Nichols, says "Bernanke, a student of the Great Depression, took steps unprecedented in the Fed’s 100-year history to steer the economy through its worst crisis since the 1930s."

If Bernanke was a student of the great depression, precisely what did he learn?

The "cause" of the great depression was not inept policies by the Fed in response to the downturn in 1929 as Bernanke proposes. Rather, the "cause" of the great depression was the debt bubble that preceded it, just as the cause of the global financial crisis was the housing and debt bubbles that preceded the crash.

Bernanke is no savior, nor did he have any clues as the following video proves.



Please play that video, again, and again until you get it.

People are entitled to their opinions, but I am entitled to the "facts". The fact of the matter is the housing bubble was obvious, yet time and time again Bernanke did not see it coming, nor did he understand the severity when the crash did come.

As a self-proclaimed "student of the great depression", Bernanke gets an "F". He did not learn a damn thing. History will not be kind to the man.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

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