Bernanke's Role: Create a bubble. Deny the bubble exists. Pop the bubble. Reinflate the bubble.

Now, maybe Bernanke is just talking his book. He's got a job to fight for after all (although it looks as though his reappointment in January is now in the bag after he received Obama's backing). But I suspect he believes what he's saying....The pattern is clear. Create a bubble. Deny the bubble exists. Then, when it pops, argue that your only responsibility is to clean up the mess. You do this by making money ever cheaper, encouraging careless lending and inflating another bubble.

"The exit from this seemingly illogical trade will leave China sitting atop a pile of devalued assets, but also, possessed of a world-class industrial infrastructure and having gone a long way towards hollowing out and undermining the economy of its sole strategic competitor."


Why the dollar is doomed

Kirchner said Isakson meant to say something different: "When you add the cost of this bill to the total national debt, it’s $100,000 per family to pay off that national debt."

That’s true enough, but isn’t saying much. The total national debt already stands at nearly $10.8 trillion, and figures out to more than $137,000 per family without adding in a penny from the stimulus bill.

Kirchner may be referring to the portion of the debt held by the public, excluding what the government owes to itself, chiefly through the Social Security trust fund. That figure already exceeds $6.5 trillion, and amounts to $82,292 per family. But nearly half of that was added during the eight years of the Bush administration.

What will the stimulus bill cost per family?