Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Bernanke used the wrong tools for economic recovery

 After World War II, Hong Kong was in a depression. But the economy developed rapidly thereafter under the leadership of John James Cowperthwaite, a British civil servant and financial secretary of Hong Kong from 1961 to 1971. Asked later what he did to achieve this economic miracle, he replied, "I didn't do anything. I just prevented others from taking bad measures."

Employment would have improved even more without the money-printing of the past few years. The Fed acted correctly to save the financial system during the financial crisis, which it created with its easy-money policies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But Ms. Yellen could be sitting on a barrel of gunpowder, pouring gasoline on top of it, and lighting a cigarette, and she wouldn't know the danger of bubble creation.

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