Sense on Cents

Hail Mary passes are typically thrown late in a game in an attempt to clutch victory from the jaws of defeat. Ben Bernanke’s statement at the Fed’s Jackson Hole conference this past week is an indication that he is getting ready to throw his “Hail Mary.”  The problem that I see, though, is that our ‘game’ is only somewhere in the second quarter.

Have you ever witnessed a football game where one team literally has to scrap its game plan because it finds itself in such a huge hole in the first quarter? That, my friends, is analogous to the state of the U.S. economy going into 2008.  While we could debate whether the calls made by our coaching staff in Washington have helped or hurt our recovery, the fact is Ben and his fellow coaches have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at the economy and the results are anything but robust.

For a review of the game to date and the uncertain prognosis going forward, The New York Times’ Peter Goodman provides a wealth of ‘sense on cents’ in his fabulous and comprehensive commentary, (more…)