Bernanke is probably buying time and hoping for the inflationary numbers to come down before cutting interest rates further. Otherwise, why would he agree to fiscal stimulation but not cutting rates to stimulate the economy now ? He knows fiscal stimulation will take more than a while to materialize. Hopefully by then, the inflationary tendencies will have subsided.

Bush, Bernanke See Eye-To-Eye On Stimulus Package

Based on GW Bushs' track record, this statement will certainly calm investors.

Let's get one thing straight, people. This is not about rescuing the economy, protecting the country or helping Americans. Those Ideas are dead! And if you try to offer logical answers or find reasonable fixes for what we face and wonder "Why don't they see it?" then you are the ones with your eyes closed. Still.

I really don't know: Is it the water, or the air, or our television sets, or these damned computers, or some kind of mass hypnosis; have we lost our senses to a weird form of de-evolution--or did we just get fat and lazy?

When Washington was trying to lead the Continental Army he was faced with men who felt it was their duty and right to go home and see to their families and farms, to exercise the very basic freedoms that they felt they were fighting for--and Nobody was going to tell them what they could or couldn't do. Made Washington crazy, but it was that same sense of who they were and what they were about that allowed us to ultimately be victorious against the world's greatest super power!

Can you imagine soldiers today, thinking for themselves as the Constitution provides? Can you imagine Any of us, thinking freely for ourselves and doing what it takes? Well, you had better, because the System has won. And maybe it just took technology catching up with greed and the lust for power to finally make it happen, but this war is over. And neither Obama or Hillary or any of the others is going to fix it, so get over it.

But the next war will mean turning this country on its edge, shaking every incumbent in every elected office into the dustbin of history and reestablishing the Constitutional principles upon which America was founded; Living and breathing freedom as the life and death struggle that those first American's knew it to be. We need to stop praying, stop hoping and start thinking and doing, or this will be a long long dark time.

To gain a few upticks on the Stock Market, Bernanke/Bush and a clueless Congress will mandate printing and distributing more paper money.

The lasting effect of this futile attempt to arrest a Stock Market crash will be further devaluation of the dollar and erosion of the weakening restraints on inflation.

In previous Depresions, the devastated public was able to survive because prices fell (deflation). No longer able to afford separate living quarters, families huddled together, someone in the family had a job, and we muddled through the hard times.

But this cannot be done if there is inflation.

Until the end of WWII, we experienced depressions on an average of once every 15 years. We understood that we had a boom and bust economy. We so much loved the upside euphoria that we accepted the hard times as the hangover after the party.

Labor took lower, competitive wages, frivolous industries were eliminated and through hard work and Yankee ingenuity we clawed our way back up.

Following WWII, in the context of the Cold War we believed that we could not afford a fullout Depression. The Almighty Dollar had become accepted as the number one world currency. We were the Bank.

This allowed us to print paper money to abort down cycle bottoming. This type of Keynesian pump-priming has a corollary. Once the pump is primed, you have to pay back a large portion of what you have borrowed in the pump-prime or it will eventually become too inflationary and the full faith and credit of the currency will be undermined.

Sadly, that is where we are today. Printing more paper money can only lead to a plummeting dollar and runaway inflation. Fixed income and Social Security recipients will be drowned by the inflation.

Accepting real hard times and instituting Price Controls is a better long term solution, but you can't run for office on that platform.

I despair.

There is a Keynesian solution for keeping the economy on an even keel. Raise taxes and cut spending in good times, lower taxes and increase spending during bad times. Roosevelt, during the Great Depression, began such projects as the WPA and CCC. Put people to work, put money in their pockets, and they will spend their way out of the recession.

And now, Bush is going to try some pansy-ass Friedman crap. Oh, big deal - the last time, it was just a temporary loan, you had to pay back the rebate. You don't think that Wall Street will allow the government to let you keep your money, do you? Meanwhile, a Keynesian solution is all but impossible. Cut taxes? Only way to do that is to raise them big-time on the rich, so tax breaks can be given the working and lower-middle class. Bush, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street, will never do that. Giving tax breaks to the rich HURTS the economy (while making the rich richer, which is why we have this regressive system). How, might you ask, does giving tax breaks to the rich hurt the economy? Because rich folks don't spend it, they don't spend the money they have now. No, they put it in off-shore tax shelters, taking money out of the economy (and hurting tax receipts in the future. That's why they call it a tax shelter, and is why every time the Republicans, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, give tax breaks to the rich, our deficit hits the roof.)

And how can we increase spending? Spending money overseas does not help - which is why Iraq and Afghanistan hurt our economy so badly. No, it has to be spent here, putting people to work. Bush has driven our budget into the ground. Adding more to the deficit just hurts us worse, and brings closer the day our government becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of China.

I despair for my nation, my people, and our future. Thanks, Mr. Bush.

Eye to eye?

More like eye to sphincter with Bernanke's nose so far up W’s ass

Americans are already not paying enough taxes to cover their nation's debt. Shrub is quite insane you know.

Reasonable thought has substituted a discussion on the economy to dabbble in sex. Clinton had his problems, but the misery visited upon the world and here at home by the the Bush/Cheney incompetence should be your major concern. If ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

Of course they see eye to eye. They and their friends will both make a boat load of money off of this. This is a smoke to cover a problem. Not a solution.

This is truly alarming!

Under no circumstance would I be comfortable with anything that Bush supports. Even if the headline said, "Bush agrees with Bernanke", I would be suspicious.

Bush has fucked up everything - don't forget that.

Personally, I want some smart economists and congress to determine what to do.

Bush is a disgraceful idiot.

"Swish! Flick!"

Yawn.

I can tell you right now exactly what it will be. There will be a call for (notice: "a call for") tax cuts for somebody. The magic money-wand will swish and flick through the air and a few ten billion dollars will magically appear and land somewhere (inside the Beltway).

Stock prices will briefly but obediently rise.

News stories will be dumped out proclaiming how "happy days are here again" and attaching this "success" to this-or-that candidate. Or, blaming "the lack of action" upon this-or-that OTHER-candidate.

Yawn.

If you want to address the hundreds of issues that face this economy ... that is to say, the hundreds of millions of people who actually live here full-time ... it would take a lot of grueling work and might land some of you in prison.

So, naah. "Swish! Flick!" ...

... same old shift.

The crumbling infrastructure needs attention--money and workers, However there is a phony war somewhere in the Middle East sucking the wealth right out of the US and not even the gloom and doom of a recession or worse can deter the idiots in Wahington form squandering more billions into the sink hole of Iraq while the value of stocks and homes freefall into oblivion. I agree that a stimulus package may not be the answer to jump start the economy because the Bush administration has created a mess in foreign affairs and here at home that it appears nothing will correct his malfeasance and misfeasance. Some here claim that we need more sustained growth but with the high level of personal and public debt in the trillions, layoffs, unemployment, outsourcing, falling dollar, 3 million mfg jobs lost, heavy borrowing from abroad, endless war costing hundreds of billions of dollars and growing, trade imbalances, credit markets in turmoil, auto industry tanking and energy costs thru the roof, social security and medicare increases looming and this country headed for third world status, the prospects for sustained growth are not good. It will take at least a decade to unravel the mischief of Bush and the republicans.

What- more tax cuts for the rich, while they send the rest of us $300 and tell us to go shop? Bush and Bernanke will save us?

BULLSHIT!

After reading the whole article, I find it curious that it never mentions Bush's demand to make permanent the tax cut for the wealthy. Prediction: Congress puts forward a plan that largely benefits the lower and middle class, Bush rejects, Congress capitulates.