Only a Phone Call Away

Those funny fellows at The Economist reflect on the changing of the guard at the Federal Reserve in the wake of the "misunderstanding" revealed by CNBC personality Maria Bartiromo after speaking with new Fed Chief Ben Bernanke at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.

America's markets responded skittishly to comments by Ben Bernanke, rallying after the chairman of the Federal Reserve signalled that the policy of raising interest rates was over, and falling in response to a later report that he thought his comments had been misunderstood.

Pundits made inevitable comparisons with Mr. Bernanke's predecessor, Alan Greenspan, who made a point of never being understood.

Somehow this plainspoken, transparency thing isn't working out quite as expected. Maybe next time Ben Bernanke should do as Dick Cheney suggested a while a back and give 'ol Greenie a call and ask him what he would do.

In the words of the Veep, "Chairman Greenspan is only a phone call away."



Thanks to VHB for sending this cartoon.

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A reader posted this link about the postage rate and inflation question raised during last week's Friday Lite post (be careful if you use a Mozilla browser - the Zeal site is one of those that uses Microsoft Front Page and will peg your Firefox performance meter).

Since there's plenty of room left on this post, open source devotees will be spared the indignity of another Microsoft plot to foil their competition by displaying the chart here.

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What the heck? Here's a recent cartoon from Tom Toles.