This is going to sound very obvious but the first thing we learned is that the U.S. is not invulnerable to financial crises.” Ben Bernanke, private citizen.
Link Reuters (3-4-2014)
MK comment:
Translation for those who haven’t spent the last several years structuring FedSpeak:
“This will sound ridiculously obvious, but the U.S. is vulnerable to financial crises.”
What is astonishing about this comment is that it was required of the Fed to learn the obvious, or that people of Bernanke’s caliber might have somehow believed that it might be otherwise. The ancient Greeks warned heavily against this sort of thing and called it hubris. Bernanke, with studied aplomb, drops the comment as if he were on the evening news explaining his latest blown call on the weather. Alan Greenspan, you might recall, also made statements recently to the effect that he didn’t understand what was going-on in the U.S. economy during his turn at the helm. One wonders if a properly algorithmed computer might be the answer. . . At least we wouldn’t have to listen any longer to retired Fed chairman attempting to explain what they learned (or failed to learn) by doing, instead of bringing it to the table when they took the job.
The Ed Stein cartoon above first made its appearance at the USAGOLD website in July, 2010. It more or less captured the moment. Needless to say, this lack of rudimentary understanding heightens the need for gold ownership in the personal portfolio.
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