After watching the antics of central bankers over the last several weeks, especially the failed attempts of the Japanese and Swiss efforts to bring down the exchange rates of their currencies and the increasingly pathetic attempts of the U.S. Federal Reserve to keep the economy and monetary systems afloat, it seems that there are fewer and fewer tools available to central bankers in the game of resuscitating a terminally ill patient.
Basically, what I see from the U.S. administration is a terrific amount of spin to put the best possible face on any release of economic info, from jobs to industrial production, clever techniques of revising previous months stats lower to make it appear that the current month's info is positive and above all, "quantitative easing", or "printing" by continuing to guarantee bad debt and by buying its own Treasury Bonds. Interest rates are at zero. They can't go lower. Gold is steadily rising and US debt is rising like a rocket. And Ben Bernanke says that he stands ready to print as required.
We are running out of time to arrive at anything resembling an elegant admission that we are living well beyond our means and to take the necessary albeit difficult road to reorient our policies towards far less consumption and far more production. Alas, it seems that we have chosen the futile path of printing and deceit to keep the entrenched system in place, however rotten and however more costly and difficult this will be when it inevitably topples.
