Separately, CA is playing it smart. Just scalped 3B from infrastructure budget. Look for CA to get the biggest Obama handout next year (to create jobs!)

A lot of people give a lot of credibility and credit (no pun intended) to Fed and the tools in their arsenal. To me the Fed itself is a big tool. The Alan Greenspan’s Fed, in which Bernanke is a part of, didn’t see this OBVIOUS thing coming. People who believe that Bernanke studied great depression and hence he can prevent one might as well be better of believing Santa. If he really studied GD, he should have prevented it because, for many who have half-knowledge of GD this is all too familiar. Bernanke should have raised hell to raise interest rates in 2003 and prevented this. Armed only with publicly available data, if I was smart enough to short home builders in 2005 and make a profit, I am sure Bernanke should have known more. He has access to more data. He didn’t act then. He is reacting now.

IMHO Greenspan and Bernake will go down in history as the pair that ruined America. BTW, My animosity for Greenspan’s reckless policies is not new. It is more than 10 years old. When I was a regular participant on Silicon Investor, I started this thread nearly 10 years ago.

http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/subject.aspx?subjectid=24815

Yes, my handle on SI is Cynic2005. Since that time my opinion about Greenspan has changed only for the worse. Now I added Bernanke to the list.

I am in your and Mohan’s camp as well. It’s amazing to me the number of people who still think this is just “another” recession that will be worked out relatively quickly, say within a few years. There HAS BEEN massive destruction of wealth, created through leverage, and most of that has occurred among baby boomers who will soon be drawing from the social security system. Most of these people, who previously were spending like fools, will be scrimping for the rest of their lives. This prognosis assumes all is quiet on the geopolitical front. Throw in a couple wars, multiple terrorist attacks, as well as numerous natural disasters and we are really looking at a nasty situation. I can only laugh at those who say we will come out of this better than the rest of the world because we are “Americans”, apparently God’s gift to the world. That kind of arrogance is what will truly destroy the United States. The “social contract” that has bound Americans together, and created an irrational respect for and subservience to the federal government, has been immensely damaged by the “crafty” Ben Bernanke, the fool Hank Paulson, and the narcissistic retard Georgie boy Bush. The actions taken to bail out the rich and connected at the expense of the average citizen has created a slow burning rage among many in this country. The people being bailed out are the same people who conspired to outsource American jobs, or insource through illegal immigration, in order to put money in their own pockets. I do not believe the early thirties are a good analogy for the current situation. The situations in Czarist Russia during the period of 1916-1920, or, the situation in Weimar Germany circa 1928-1930 are much more comparable.

Of course elliotician’s reserve the right to change labels anytime