It’s suggested in many quarters that Germany’s finance minister has called Bernanke ‘clueless’ after hearing about Bernanke’s planned implementation of QE2. There is a further and I believe more accurate suggestion that suggests this is a poor translation of what was actually said, and Bernanke was more correctly described as being ‘at a loss’.
This works for me. I’ve said since Mervyn King bought in QE1 in the UK that this was a completely irrelevant measure, made for cosmetic purposes and nothing else. He just did it to make it appear as if he were doing something constructive, while in reality there was simply nothing constructive at all that could be done. Bernanke is following suit, clear indication that he’s got nothing left in his arsenal either. The Germany finance minister obviously understands this and has said so. Reporting what he’s said as something different, as is happening in the mainstream press, is simply misleading. Is this wilful? I would say so.
BB