Bernanke's State of Finances Assessment

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pairunoyd Posted: Fri, Aug 21 2009 7:57 PM

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I visit Kitco's forums quite a bit. They're a metals dealer of some sort, etc, etc. One of their analysts is Jon Nadler. Strangely, he appears to be a shill for fiat and a perma-bear on Gold. Weird, huh?

Here's a clip from his commentary. I'm adding it here because of the bullet points by Fed guy Ben Bernanke:

This morning’s focus was the keynote speech offered by Mr. Bernanke at the Jackson Hole tete-a-tete of the world’s financial who’s whos. We have distilled Mr. B’s remarks down to twenty abbreviated points in order to save you time. The recap of the crisis by the Fed boss was sobering as well as valuable. In a nutshell, he concluded that the sky -as we knew it- did fall in 2008. TEOTWAWKI has come and gone, and it could have been much grimmer. And now, for the top 20 bullets of the day quoted as close to possible to the original text:

• The crisis has been global, with no major country having been immune.
• We must urgently address structural weaknesses in the regulatory framework.
• The strong and unprecedented international policy response proved broadly effective.
• Critically, it averted the imminent collapse of the global financial system.
• Concerted policy actions avoided much worse outcomes.
•  The financial shocks nevertheless severely damaged the global economy.
• The crisis affected economic activity by pushing down asset prices and tightening credit.  
• Central banks cut rates to very low levels and implemented unconventional monetary measures.  
• Actions by central banks augmented large fiscal stimulus packages in the United States, China, and a number of other countries.
• Overall, the policy actions implemented in recent months have helped stabilize a number of key financial markets, both in the United States and abroad.
• Critically, fears of financial collapse have receded substantially.
• After contracting sharply over the past year, economic activity appears to be leveling out.
• The economic recovery is likely to be relatively slow at first, with unemployment declining only gradually from high levels.
• The events of September and October 2008 exhibited some features of a classic panic.
• Liquidity risk management at the level of the firm, no matter how carefully done, can never fully protect against systemic events.
• The world has been through the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression.
• The crisis in turn sparked a deep global recession, from which we are only now beginning to emerge.
• As severe as the economic impact has been, however, the outcome could have been decidedly worse.
• Although we have avoided the worst, difficult challenges still lie ahead.
• We must build a new financial regulatory framework that will reflect the lessons of this crisis and prevent a recurrence of the events of the past two years.