From 9AM to 10AM each day, CNBC has a program called "Squawk on the Street" that usually conducts some unscientific viewer poll. Very often, the subject is trivia. Today, they asked viewers to call in to vote whether they felt the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve System was doing a competent job or not. They had a record number of calls, with an amazing 98% saying Bernanke was not doing a competent job.
At 2:15 this afternoon, Bernanke held his second press conference, taking unscripted questions from reporters. When he started talking, the stock market was flat. Immediately, it started leaking slowly, the Dow losing 80 points by the 4PM close. That would be billions of dollars of lost value in the stock market.
All we heard was that growth is less than the Fed originally expected, that inflation is worse, that QE2 will end this month, that there are no plans for QE3, and that Greece is important. Of course, we already knew all that, but the stock market still lost value because he confirmed what we already knew.
Maybe, he wouldn't get a 98% disapproval rating if he told us something we didn't know?
Frankly, I'm among the 2% who think he has done a credible job of staving off a possible depression in 2008, as well as deflation in 2010. While it can be fun to dis-respect the powerful, especially with the benefit of hindsight, Bernanke utilized monetary tools that most economists barely knew about, and he did it in an uncertain market with conflicting data. Personally, I think he deserves a raise!
