Exposing the Hollow Men
The hollow men are not here to serve you or me. They are here for their masters. And it has been that way since at least 1913.
Happy Friday the 13th. An inauspicious type of day, if you believe in that sort of thing. (Better not to, of course. They say it’s bad luck to be superstitious.)
Ben Bernanke certainly had his share of bad luck this week. The carefully planned actions of the Federal Reserve – calibrated just so to walk that fine line between too accommodative and not enough – were thrown into a cocked hat by a barrage of ugly data points from around the world.
China slowing. Britain slowing. New sovereign debt jitters from Ireland. Japan sinking back into the muck. Perhaps worst of all, a U.S. trade deficit that clearly shows the “recovery” spinning its wheels.
What will the Federal Reserve do now? Should Bernanke and Co.