Ben Bernanke and the Fed: Wall Street and The Financial Media Aren't Listening!

With yesterday's Fed announcement we have yet again evidence that the big hedge fund managers and Wall Street Analysts generally don't listen to Fed announcements and if they do, they don't have the intelligence to understand them.

As noted in the New York Times today, "One of the first rules of survival in the financial jungle is to trade the market you have rather than the one you want. Love it or hate it Bernanke's policy is clear and undeniable. History suggests accepting reality is more lucrative than moral outrage." 

Oh but the mavens of Wall Street are expressing their moral indignation because they haven't paid any attention to Bernanke's oft repeated statement that the Fed policy direction will be determined by basic economic data. Because the economy is still struggling, the Fed board decided that now is not the time to remove the stimulus medication. 

Many Wall Street analysts have issued statements that clearly indicate that they do not understand, or see the relationship between the performance of the US Economy and the Fed Stimulus program.

In point of fact, the evidence does indicate the the stimulus program works; however, it is also true that Congressional actions (playing politics with the debt ceiling etc.) have made the economic recovery much more difficult than it should be.

Congressional game playing--Tea Party nonsense--coupled with the massive elimination of Federal and State jobs has played a major role in slowing the economic recovery.

In the state of Wisconsin alone we'e looking at the loss of several hundred thousand government jobs at the state level. . .not surprisingly the State of Wis. lags far behind the nation generally in job creation numbers. You just can't suck money out of the economic system and expect it to function as though there were no changes. . .the "Sequester" cuts hat Congress fashioned also negatively feed this same economic equation--more money being taken out of the system just when the system needed more money.

In sum, I think we've been extremely fortunate to have had Ben Bernanke at the helm of the Fed during these tough years; otherwise we'd have had more of the Bush/Hank Paulson mess to live through. Obama should either re-appoint Bernanke or go with Janet Yellen who endorses the Bernanke economic policies.

In the meantime, let us hope that the economic nitwits who dominate CNBC,CNN, Fox and The Bloomberg financial networks would just keep quiet. . .perhaps do a little listening and reading.

jflynn