All sorts of apocalyptic natural disasters mean that it wasn't exactly a quiet week in Washington, but earthquake and hurricane notwithstanding, I'm not sure that there's very much that really mattered this week, as far as policy or electoral politics were concerned. Am I missing something?
Other than that, Libya, certainly. What else? What do you think mattered this week?
What mattered was Bernanke saying, "The economy sucks. inflation is low. We could do something about it, but nah." Your move, Mr. President. Demand Congress pass a big jobs bill.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Bernanke made it clear that he's more concerned about 2 percent inflation than about 10 percent unemployment. That's kind of a big deal.
ReplyDelete3 Things.
ReplyDeleteA poll took many by surprise in showing Rick Perry as the GOP frontrunner.
The Libyan situation demonstrated that the low key, not leading the charge military contribution worked out pretty well.
And
The "man on the white horse" view of history was reinforced with so much attention directed at Steve Jobs and how big an impact he had on the lives of so many people.
2 Things - The press is now talking about talking about Ron Paul, but they still aren't evaluating his policies and their loopy effects should he ever be elected.
ReplyDeleteThe next tax grandstanding opportunity may be over letting the temporary Social Security tax cut expire. However, I'm a little confused by this. It will expire at the end of the year, but before that we should have the supercommittee agreement or non-agreement to fight over.
One last comment--I'm sorry to see several commenters think we can stimulate the economy with more free money. The stimulus in 2009 stopped the unemployment spiral, but loose monetary policy hasn't helped since then. Why try it again? It's time to look for a different solution (and not a fast one, I suspect).
Yeah, it's Bernanke. President Perry intimidated him, I guess, because you know he had QE3 in the pipeline and ready to go.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the Chinese had something to say about it, too, when Biden was visiting.
And the Euro zombie banks are about to go belly up, apparently, so that shoe is about to drop. Interesting times.